In a fascinating text from 1989, Jeff Wall writes about the “echo of water” in analogue photography. He is referring to the fact that developing a recorded photographic image requires the use of water, which, within this conceptual figure, represents “fluid intelligence.” In his understanding, the encounter between natural forms and the apparatus of photography becomes a reflection of humanity’s entire “technological and ecological dilemma” in relation to nature—its confrontation with that which is incalculable.

For Jeff Wall, the prospect of photography’s digitalization represented an expansion of its “dry” aspect: optical and technological intelligence; the lens and the eye performing a cool separation of what is represented. From today’s perspective, this gesture may seem counterintuitive, since the digital image has come to be understood as fluid and open to manipulation. Yet precisely this reversal makes it possible to think of the emergence of artificial intelligence systems as a moment in which fluid intelligence returns—not only to the photographic image as an artifact, but also to the apparatus of photography as an infrastructure of the image, together with its technological and ecological dilemmas.