David Baltzer - September 2026

What is a photograph? David Baltzer did not travel beyond the perimeter of his studio and never turned away from his computer to create this issue’s portfolio. Every image in this collection came from typed prompts, fed into an AI model, refined through repeated iterations until the picture in his mind matched the picture on his screen. To many working photographers, this will sound like heresy — a violation of everything the medium is supposed to mean. No shutter. No light hitting a sensor. No decisive moment, in Cartier-Bresson's sense, because there was no moment at all. Whether you find Baltzer's approach persuasive or infuriating, the images demand a response, one that considers the tension, between craft and creation, between what a photograph is and what it might become.