In his book and TV series “Ways of Seeing” John Berger explains how the way we see things is determined by what we know.¹ The photos saved in our smartphones have personal meanings to us beyond their representation of symbols and objects. However, as a medium of only 150 years old (compared to painting that is 65,000 years old), the distribution of photography has altered the speed of people consuming objects and meanings. 3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are shared online daily. Visual imagery is consumed so quickly that the objects or places started to lose their uniqueness and the depth of their meanings. They have become symbols of representations in the observer’s subconscious. Susan Sontag compares celebrity images to the visual equivalent of soundbites as she says “we are speaking to images rather than they are speaking to us-they speak very little to us”. ² This project aims to question and investigate the speed of image distribution and the alteration of meaning using artificial intelligence.

According to the reverse image search on TinEye website, “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” is the world’s second most used online image with 18,691 results.³ Time included the image in its 2016 list of the 100 most influential images of all time. The image shows 11 ironworkers having lunch on a steel beam 260 meters above the ground in Manhattan, New York City in 1932. The photo has a very strong global representation as an iconic emblem of the New York City during a time where skyscrapers were promoted. Despite its fame, the photographer and the identities of eight ironworkers in the photo remain unknown.

Being one of the most famous photos in history and having many representations attached to it, this photo formed a good opportunity to investigate the meaning that technology attaches to it. Each time searching parts of the photo, Google Lens suggested a black and white photo with diverse people and contexts including military and prison. With each result it produced, it showed two ways that the technology sees this celebrity image:

1. This is a black and white photo.
2. There are humans in it.