Pre-Digital

This photograph of model Audrey Marnay was taken by Mario Sorrenti.

Audrey Marnay is a French model and actress known for her work in the fashion industry.
Mario Sorrenti is an acclaimed photographer famous for his influential and sensual photography style, particularly during the 1990s.
The image has been described as resembling an oil painting due to its lighting and composition.

I saw this image somewhere and was taken by it, but I knew nothing about it, so I did a Google Image Search, and that is what I learned. What a peculiarly small world they lived in. Marnay began modeling professionally at the age of fifteen and was soon a major figure in the fashion world being featured in 32 magazines and garnering a Vogue cover.

Sorrenti began dating Kate Moss when she was seventeen and he was twenty, and they soon skyrocketed to fame from the photoshoot they did for the Calvin Klein "Obsession" ad.

Marnay was one of Paolo Roversi's favorite models. He also shot with Moss.

The thing that strikes me is how much that photograph looks like a Roversi image. I've not been able to find another photo by Sorrenti that looks like that. It looks much influenced by the photography of Sarah Moon who Roversi cites as an influence and "guiding light" for his own work.

It is the sort of work I love. 1990s. Pre-digital. It is like old musical recordings. One marvels at what they achieved.

Do any of you use A.I. seriously? I know a few people who do, but I keep reading how flummoxed academia is by it. I assume this refers to the classroom profesor and not the researcher. They worry that their students are cheating.

Serrano was surprised when 86 students signed up for his course this year, about triple the typical enrollment. Now he wonders if that was because the syllabus made clear the midterm and final would be take-home exams.

After the midterm, Serrano told his class that it appeared there had been widespread cheating, despite students having signed an academic integrity pledge when taking the test.

The response was silence, he said.

He also told them he was giving them a chance to prove him wrong.

After he switched the final exam to an in-person, three-hour test, 27 students dropped the class, he said. Twenty-two of them had gotten a perfect score on the midterm.

The average score on the final was a 48.6.

Given the results, he told the class he was voiding the midterm. And he asked them, if they chose to use AI on an exam: “Why are you here? Why are you attending a university?”

To me, this speaks more to how professors handle assignments than on the intelligence of the students.  Serrano, however, is very old, and maybe the technology has gotten away from him.  

Oh . . . he is also blind.  

 A.I. has been very helpful to me in a project I'm trying to begin.  I tell it what I am trying to achieve and it makes suggestions.  Excellent suggestions for the most part.  When a suggestion does not seem right to me, I'll correct it, and the resulting feedback is better than before.  You can't rely on it to do the thing for you, but it is good at making you think about what you are doing.  It can, I believe, inspire better research and writing, but as it stands just now, I don't think it can replace it.  A medical doctor using A.I. must still be the final judge of the best way to treat a condition, but A.I. can certainly help.  It is crazy fast and useful.  But you must always keep in mind that you are working with a product from a profit-loving corporation.  Do not fall for its flattery.  You must work to make it critical of your ideas and give you pushback.  I pay for a subscription, so it does begin to know what I am looking for, I think.  

I wish there was a non-corporate, benign opens source A.I. though.   

Perhaps there is.  

I will try to make my own pictures today.  I'll try to get out with a camera.  But man, it seems I have a lot to do.  

"How many retirees does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"One.  It just takes all day."