From "Perfect Algorithm" to "Resonance Ethics": Deceleration Practice and Relationship Reconstruction in Documentary Photography in the AI Era
The proliferation of AI‑generated images is eroding photography's indexicality—the optically causal, referential relationship between image and physical world. This crisis extends beyond the conditions of truth‑value to the ontological question of how the subject relates to the world. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa's theory of resonance, this paper reconceptualizes the crisis as a "resonance poverty" that cuts deeper than the mere loss of authenticity: by dispensing with bodily presence, bypassing temporal delay, and erasing material traces, image production systematically dissolves the non‑instrumental, affective bond between humans and the world. In this context, documentary photography mediated by traditional film emerges as a potential site for rebuilding this bond—its irreducible bodily embeddedness, temporal latency, and material aging constitute a counter‑response to resonance poverty. The paper accordingly proposes a threefold resonance mechanism: tactile resonance grounded in physical presence, anticipatory resonance sustained by temporal delay, and indexical resonance embodied in handcrafted materiality. Invoking Roland Barthes' distinction, AI images may satisfy the expectations of the studium, yet documentary photography preserves a space for the punctum to surface; John Berger's conception of seeing as a selective act embedded in temporal depth provides the phenomenological grounding for this argument. Building on this, the paper advances a "resonance ethics" that replaces "authenticity" with "relationality" as the core criterion for image evaluation, thereby offering a more inclusive normative starting point for visual culture studies in the AI era.
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