Cubicus Building Of Twente University (1969-73) In Enschede, The Netherlands, By Leo Heijdenrijk & Jos

Wotruba Church in Vienna.

y’know, the more i think about it, the more i realize that the knee-jerk “we need copyright law to protect The Artists from AI” reaction around AI illustration feels like the intellectual property equivalent of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mentality

you see people supporting policies that serve against their economic interests out of the delusion that the american dream is real and they’re ever going to be wealthy enough to benefit from those policies

in the same vein, i feel like some artists talk as if stronger copyright law enforcement would benefit them in light of the advent of AI illustration, when it exists solely to protect the interests of massive rights-holding conglomerates who have the capital required to actively utilize it

in other words, you are not lars ulrich, the current infrastructure will not protect you, and stronger copyright enforcement would let warner bros. call a drone strike on you for selling Our Flag Means Death fanart on etsy long, long before it would stop AI models from adding your art to their massive pool of reference data

Le Corbusier, Palais des Filateurs, Ahmedabad, Inde, 1954. Photo: Ester Bruzkus.

YUGOSLAVIA 1926

In the mid-1920s the prominent German photographer Kurt Hielscher was invited by the government in Belgrade to travel to Yugoslavia and create a book with images of the state, founded only a few years earlier. Kurt Hielscher had already published similar and very successful books about Italy, Spain and Germany, so he took up the invitation with enthusiasm.

The journey - from the Alps to Novo Mesto towards Bulgaria - produced 1200 photographs, from which he chose 191. In Hielscher's words, those were the few "which would try to show the attractive, diverse character of the landscape, the architecture, and way of life of the Yugoslavs... I didn't want to create a collection of postcards".

The result is a stunning and often moving collection, published in a book in 1926 in Berlin by Ernst Wassmuth AG.

Please, respect the author's original work, do not "colorize" these photo plates. It's an act of vandalism.

village house in Krašnja

Otočec castle on the Krka river

Šibenik

Split

Črešnjevac

Girls from Busovača

Počitelj on the Neretva

Mostar

Sarajevo market

The Al Jazeera journalists dreading having to pass the microphone to Abu Jamal every time

Headquarters of the French Communist Party, Paris. Oscar Niemeyer.

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The Hotel Añaza, whose construction started in 1973 and stopped in 1975.

Tenerife, Canary Islands - Spain.

© Roberto Conte (2023)

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