Caught in the Loop: Photography, AI, and the Circulation of Images

Photo Fringe Symposium 2026 This symposium offers a focused, research-led exploration of photography as a feedback loop of production: an iterative process in which images are continuously generated, circulated, recombined, archived and reactivated across artistic practice, computational systems and institutional infrastructures. In contemporary visual culture, photography no longer operates as a linear process of capture → edit → publish. Instead, it exists within a recursive ecology shaped by AI image generation, platform circulation, archival reuse and reappropriation, and algorithmic indexing. Bringing these ideas into conversation, the symposium asks: how do images now produce further images? And what happens to photographic practice as it becomes increasingly entangled with systems of computation, data and institutional mediation? Join us to explore these questions and consider how photography is being transformed by the systems through which images are made, encountered, circulated and remembered. In partnership with POST, University of Sussex and University of Brighton. Co-ordination Support Ola Teper Running order and speaker information to be announced. Funds raised from ticket sales go directly to Photo Fringe to make the festival happen and ensure its future. Image: Stanislas Sauvage, Lauderdale Tower, Barbican, London EC2 £2,000,000, 2024