From 18th-Century Portrait Painters to AI Imagery

In the mid-to-late 18th century, as portrait painters struggled to preserve their art form against the sudden intrusion of photographic technology, one can imagine the rumblings across the parlors, salons, and academies of Europe and America. Painters, who had long been accustomed to controlling the manner, mood, and meaning of a subject’s likeness through the deliberate strokes of their brushes, saw photography as not just a mechanical rival, but a dull and unfeeling intruder onto a sacred terrain they had cultivated for centuries.