Temporal Dimensions in Virtual Photography in and through Artistic Practice
As modernity gave rise to the medium of photography at a time when technological development accelerated, photography could seemingly stop time (Beelden-Adams, 2010). ‘Imaginary Times’ examines the significance of photography’s temporality in the age of generative AI, in which optical-mechanical photography is increasingly replaced by real-time digital processes and machine learning (Zylinska, 2023). Virtual photographs (Shobeiri, 2024) today do more than capture or represent time. Algorithms often generate them and actively shape their temporality during creation (Dewdney, 2022).
‘Imaginary Times’ investigates the relationship between contemporary photographic technologies and the creation, depiction, and perception of temporality in photography. Specifically, it focuses on photography through continuous human-algorithmic co-composition processes that unsettle traditional linear concepts of time and create virtual photographic spaces where time is out of joint (Steyerl, 2012).
This artistic research project emphasises the urgency of a debate on the shifting indexicality and iconography of time in virtual photography. It demonstrates the medium’s transformation from the mechanical slicing of time to the synthetic curation and probabilistic prediction of time (Somaini, 2026) while searching for alternative photographic temporalities through the lenses of artistic practice, human imagination, and collective encounters.
The following questions will be explored during the research trajectory: what do virtual photographs, specifically photos generated with AI, do to modes of experiencing temporality? How can artistic research contribute to understanding this temporality and its visual appearance? If so, how can this understanding foster an artistic practice rooted in photographic temporality that provides a framework for more human aspects in virtual photography, such as togetherness, craftsmanship, and collectivity?
Katrin Korfmann (1971, DE) is a photographic artist, researcher, and educator who graduated in photography from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, was a residency artist at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, and currently lectures at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague.
Her artistic practice is rooted in photography, with an expanded understanding of the medium that is no longer limited to the lens. She uses images, installations, and human encounters to explore the potentials, promises, limitations, and perspectives inherent in the medium. These explorations investigate social constructions in public space and decode and interpret these constructions through the photographic medium.
Her work has been awarded numerous prizes, including Prix de Rome (2nd), Esther Kroon Award, Bieler Fototage Prize, and has received various grants from international institutions such as the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Robert Bosch and Würth Foundation, and the Mondriaan Fund. Korfmann published three artist monographs and has received commissions from several organizations, including the Ministry of Finance, Rijksgebouwendienst, Schiphol Airport, LUMC Leiden, and the Stockholm County Council. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Photography Museum Rotterdam, Museum of Contemporary Art The Hague; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Kansas; Aperture New York; Three Shadows Art Centre Xiamen; and at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.