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Plötsligt ser vi dem överallt. I nyhetsflöden, sociala medier och reklam har så kallade ”promptografier” – alltså bilder som skapats av generativ AI – blivit allt vanligare. De ser ut som fotografier, men är ändå något helt annat. Många upplever dem som kusliga – men varför? Är det teknologin som spökar? Eller handlar det om vad bilderna gör med vår relation till det förflutna? Konstvetaren Anna-Maria Hällgren resonerar kring promptografins plats i medielandskapet och bildhistorien.

This chapter explores how the industrial exploration of northern Sweden was illustrated, documented and visualized during the late nineteenth century. It focuses on the richly illustrated publication Lappland: Det stora svenska framtidslandet (Lapland: The Great Swedish Land of the Future) from 1908. The analysis sheds light on how radical interference with nature was construed as a necessity, although sometimes reluctantly so. More importantly, it discerns the efforts and means to resolve an apparent contradiction between economic and aesthetic value, and at which cost this was done. The article demonstrates how both the visual representation and practice of looking encouraged by the publication should be understood as a way of marketing and legitimizing colonial exploration by transforming Lapland from a site to a sight – drawing on a conceptual distinction by W.J.T. Mitchell. By examining how nature, at the turn of the nineteenth century, was both conveyed as an aesthetic experience and natural resource within art and other forms of visual culture, the chapter demonstrates how the exploitation of nature, within art and other forms of visual culture, was constructed as both desirable and beautiful. The consequences are still felt today. 

The ability to analyze, historicize, and examine images and image flows cannot be overestimated today. But how is it possible to take an analytical approach to contemporary and historical visual cultures, which are often characterized by a substantial fragmentation? In visual culture studies, the empirical possibilities can remain numerous, provided that it is above all the research questions and not a predetermined material – that drive the analysis. This book is aimed at those who wish to deepen and develop their knowledge of images and visual communication. Through empirically grounded texts, the book provides analytical tools to examine how images have been and are part of the construction, transmission, and consolidation of knowledge and experience, as well as how images can express values, ideologies, and aesthetic norms.