A well-known chef who’s earned a great reputation as a Dallas restaurant owner as well has a new and different talent to share. Good Day talked to Chef Janice Provost about the photos that make up the new exhibit titled “Captured: Beautiful Strangers.”

This was my first project after my 20-year collaboration with Adam Broomberg came to a close in 2021. I had never really worked as an artist or a photographer on my own, but I think we both needed to see what it felt like. Our photos had been highly conceptual, and I wanted to return to why I first became a photographer: going out into the world with a feeling of wonder, watching and having experiences with strangers. So that’s what I spent 2022 doing: meeting pensioner groups, carnival troupes, gender activists and, as this image shows, attending a meeting of the Casualties Union, who were perfecting wound makeup.

The Casualties Union, a group of volunteers that has been operational since the second world war, is used by hospitals, the emergency services and even corporate clients, to test out catastrophe scenarios. If the police were staging a hypothetical suicide attack in London, they would need casualties that not only looked like the real thing but acted like the real thing. There’s a lot of performance required, and real precision about the way the volunteers act out injuries.

I’ve worked all over the world in some difficult situations, including the Afghanistan war and some psychiatric hospitals, always thinking of myself as a neutral witness. But through the making of this recent work, and because of seismic changes in our culture, I became very aware of being white and male, and the privilege and complexity that brings. In some cases, it made it quite hard for me to make the pictures I wanted to.

So many things came up during this project, called A Perfect Sentence, that I could never have imagined. The world is so much more interesting than the contents of my head. And it has changed in such a radical way: we had Brexit, the pandemic, George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter. I encountered a huge amount of anxiety from people about being in front of the camera, and about who was taking the picture. I had had this daydream about meandering along and capturing a moment in time in this country. But actually it was very fraught. Things shifted – with the focus now being on the power dynamic between photographer and subject.

I shot this project on film, which had a big impact on the pictures. There’s a time lapse between the moment that you take a shot and when you see it. I retreated into my darkroom for months. I’m not a very experienced colour printer, so I made a lot of errors, got the skin tones wrong, the exposure too light or too dark, and sometimes the pictures came out way too magenta or cyan. Then, at a certain point, I realised some of those prints were more interesting to me than whatever the final picture was. Although they were imperfect, they demonstrated that a picture is not an objective thing, not a piece of evidence, but something more subjective and nuanced.

If you look at the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, or even Martin Parr, a lot of that sort of street photography is not really morally acceptable any more. I think that style of working has been neutralised by the internet. It’s a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it means the person being pictured has a lot more authority. On the other, all the images we see today are more constructed, with less spontaneity. What I love about the Casualties Union photos is that the volunteers are trying to capture moments of trauma, yet the pictures are incredibly staged, robbing them of any real sense of urgency. These pictures speak to this tension.

A Perfect Sentence by Oliver Chanarin, produced by Forma, is at the Museum of Making, Derby, until 3 September. A book of the project is published by Loose Joints on 1 June

Oliver Chanarin’s CV

Born: London, 1971.
Trained: Artificial Intelligence at Sussex University.
Influences: “August Sander, Annie Ernaux, my mother.”
High point: “Winning the Deutsche Börse photography prize in 2013.”
Low point: “The death of Broomberg & Chanarin.”
Top tip: “As Wim Wenders said: ‘The most political decision you make is where you direct people’s eyes.’”

There aren’t many modern Fujifilm lenses that really bring me a lot of joy to use. And that’s not to say that they’re bad, but they’re big deviations away from what we’ve known Fujifilm for for years. Many of the new optics just don’t feel retro enough. However, the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO not only feels retro, but nails it on image quality. And if anything, I think it could be the best lens for Street Photography available to the Fujifilm X mount.

The Phoblographer may receive affiliate compensation for products purchased using links in this blog post.

The Big Picture

There are a lot of wonderful things going for the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO. First off, there’s the super shallow depth of field ability. And when you want to use it for street photography, you just stop it down to f5.6, focus it to five or six feet away, and then zone focus all you want. Couple all this with metal build quality, small size, and affordable pricing. Then also consider the fact that this lens has an apochromatic lens element inside to make your subjects pop even more.

Of course, while that’s also positively phenomenal, it’s not all perfect. The lens doesn’t have AF/AE contacts, and so the exposure won’t be communicated to the camera. That makes used it with a flash much harder if you’re shooting TTL. And more importantly, it’s not weather resistant, and so the build quality that your otherwise weather-resistant Fujifilm camera has is more or less voided.

We’re giving the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO four out of five stars. It’s about time that Laowa really starts adding weather resistance to their lenses. Want one? They’re $549 on Laowa’s website. Phoblographer subscribers get a special discount as a membership benefit.

Pros

• Nice focus throw
• Beautiful optics
• Lens character that’s gorgeous
• Zone focusing scale that’s incredible for street photography
• Apochromatic elements make subjects pop from the background

Cons

• Not weather resistant
• Depth of field scale goes from zero to 60 pretty fast
• No AE/AF focusing contacts

Gear Used

We tested the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO with the Fujifilm X Pro 3, the Tiffen Color Intensifier filter, and Profoto B10. The lens was on loan from Laowa, and the rest of the gear is ours.

Innovations

Where the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO is really innovative comes with it having a few things: first off, there is a quick and easy option to set the lens to have a clicked or de-clicked aperture. Additionally, there is an apochromatic lens element, that really makes subjects that are in focus pop. This is something that only Leica ever uses in their modern lenses, though Sigma has used it in at least one of their lenses. And, of course, this is an f0.95 lens for Fujifilm. While it’s not super rare, it’s very uncommon.

Ergonomics

The Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO looks a lot like the company’s other Argus lenses; which seem to be the highest end options for them. If you look at it directly from above, it will appear like most other manual focus lenses with zone focusing markers, a depth of field scale, apertures, distances, etc.

The lens hood attaches to the front of the lens and doesn’t allow you to use a lens filter at the same time. That’s an odd part of the design.

On the bottom is a switch that transforms the aperture from clicked to de-clicked easily.

Build Quality

While this lens isn’t weather resistant, it’s made of metal. And when mated to Fujifilm cameras, it feels right at home. The lack of weather resistance is consistently my biggest problem with Venus Optic lenses. I really wish that it had it to ensure that I can shoot with these lenses all day and every day. In fact, I’d use these over Fujifilm’s own lenses.

Ease of Use

This is a manual focus lens. So you can either use focus peaking combined with the power of fervent prayer, zone focusing, or you can use magnification with Fujifilm cameras. Either way, it’s a bit difficult to use when shooting wide open. But if you’re stopping down and doing zone focusing, this is by far one of the best lenses you can and will ever use for street photography with Fujifilm.

Honestly, in the hands of a skilled photographer, this lens will be faster to capture moments than Fujifilm’s own lenses.

Focusing

Like all other Laowa lenses, this is a manual focusing lens. And if you don’t like that, then consider Fujifilm’s own lenses. Otherwise, you’ll realize pretty quickly that the zone focusing abilities of this lens make it really useful for street photography and candid shooting.

Because of the design being a wide-angle lens, the focus goes from zero to infinity really fast. At around 5 feet away, the lens will really become its most useful. But if you want to zone focus anything a bit further than that, you’ll have a heck of a time.

What’s more, if you’re photographing people and shooting wide open, you really need to be super careful. The focus peaking might tell you that you’re in focus, but many times you really won’t be. It’s one of the most annoying things about this lens and you’re buying it partially for the f0.95 aperture, but it ends up not being very useful at that f-stop.

Image Quality

There is a lot to love about the image quality of the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO. Of course, photographers will want to shoot wide open with it a lot. But when you’re stopping it down, it will probably perform best, not only in terms of ease of use but also image quality. Combined with Fujifilm’s film simulations, it’s really difficult to take a bad photo with the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO.

Bokeh

I mean, look at that! Wow! The bokeh is creamy, flarey, there’s character galore, the apochromatic lens element really makes the subject stand out. You can’t say anything bad about the bokeh.

Color Rendition

The Laowa’s color rendition also comes from Fujifilm’s sensor. I used the Classic Chrome and Classic Negative film simulations a lot. And they performed exactly how I’d expect when underexposed, overexposed, etc. They’re beautiful.

Lens Character

The Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO doesn’t exhibit problems with fringing, but you’ll get a bit of swirly bokeh when you’re shooting wide open. For what it’s worth, I’m not opposed to that.

Sharpness

Stopping the lens down to f4 and f5.6 makes it feel a lot more serious. Combine that with off-camera flash and you’ll be very happy with the results you get.

Extra Image Samples

From day one, The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, lots of folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can make a decision for yourself.

Unedited

Edited

Who Should Buy the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO?

Truly, the only people I think will benefit most from using the Laowa 25mm f0.95 CF APO are street photographers. But keep in mind that the build quality isn’t weather-resistant.

Tech Specs

Taken from Laowa’s website.

A photographer selected as a category winner of this year’s international Sony Photography Awards has rejected the prize, saying his entry was actually generated using AI.

Last year, Boris Eldagsen began creating images for a collection he named Pseudomnesia, a combination of the Latin words pseudo and mnesia that essentially mean fake and memory. He entered an image from this collection into the creative open category in Sony’s photo contest, a piece titled The Electrician in December 2022. He did so without disclosing the snap had been produced with the help of text-to-image tools, since the terms allow the use of “any device.”

Convincing … Eldagsen’s award-winning AI-created snap

Eldagsen described the images in Pseudomnesia as “imagined by language and re-edited more between 20 to 40 times through AI image generators, combining ‘inpainting’, ‘outpainting’ and ‘prompt whispering’ techniques.”

Three months later, the organizers informed him he had won the creative category. Eldagsen said he then admitted to the competition’s organizers his picture had been generated using machine-learning software, and that he wanted to use the competition to launch a public discussion on how the technology was impacting photography.

Though photographers use all kinds of software applications in their work, to retouch, filter, crop, and so on, where do neural networks fit in that stack; are they acceptable tools; and where’s the line in the sand that they cross if they are not acceptable?

Interestingly enough, competitions may allow or even welcome the use of artificial intelligence, and it’s photographers who are uncomfortable with the rise of this kind of computing.

“Right now for me, it is more important that the public debate I hoped for has become international and is in full speed,” he told The Register. “I want to thank the photo community for this.”

Eldagsen said he wants to differentiate photography from realistic AI-generated images. “Can they be in one museum under the name of photography? Will this be good or bad for photography? It is complex, this is why we need to talk about it,” he told us.

He said officials ignored his requests to discuss his situation, and kept him as a winner. He confirmed to us he was rejecting the prize, which included $5,000, Sony camera gear, and a trip to the photography exhibition in London. 

“Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment,” Eldagsen wrote on his website, “as it is the first AI generated image to win in a prestigious international [photography] competition. How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn’t feel right, does it?

“AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award.

“I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not. We, the photo world, need an open discussion. A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter – or would this be a mistake? With my refusal of the award I hope to speed up this debate.”

I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out if the competitions are prepared for AI images

After Eldagsen’s stunt became public, officials scrubbed his entry from the Sony Photography Awards and removed his image from the exhibition.

It’s not the first time AI-generated artwork has won a competition. Last year, Jason Allen won the top prize of $300 for his Midjourney-made image at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition, causing much controversy.

“We were looking forward to engaging in a more in-depth discussion on this topic and welcomed Boris’ wish for dialogue by preparing questions for a dedicated Q&A with him for our website,” a World Photography Organisation spokesperson told The Guardian.

“As he has now decided to decline his award we have suspended our activities with him and in keeping with his wishes have removed him from the competition. Given his actions and subsequent statement noting his deliberate attempts at misleading us, and therefore invalidating the warranties he provided, we no longer feel we are able to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.” ®