AI continues to impact the photographic world but the industry reached a turning point in 2025, says Gem Fletcher, offering an opportunity to look to the future rather than the past
Post-pandemic, the photo industry has been turbulent, to say the least. The last four years have been full of false starts, enforced career breaks, and imagemakers doing everything they can to survive, while brands, agencies and publications have slashed budgets and cut employees. By the end of 2024, the naïve hope that the industry would return to the abundance of the 2010s was all but gone. And if I’m honest, that reality check was exactly what we needed.
As a community of people invested in images, we had to stop looking back and deal with what was in front of us. Technology, economics and information dynamics are all continuing to change, reimagining every aspect of photography from image construction to distribution. Thankfully, 2025 offered a long-overdue turning point – the moment we picked ourselves up and began to process where we stand and what might be next.
“I think much of what is happening in photography right now is an attempt to process our relationship to technology,” says commissioner and cultural critic Emily Keegin. “Photographers and brands are trying to understand if the hype of AI is real and how to engage with it.”
Top: Ukraine by Aria Shahrokhshahi; Above: Craft is our Language by Bottega Veneta, shot by Jack Davison
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