Writing for *Fotocrazia*, Michele Smargiassi poses a provocative question: what risks do we run if we agree to call the compositions created by Midjourney and its algorithmic peers “photographs”? He frames it as a doubt. I don’t. I frame it as a diagnosis. Because enough is enough. Stop calling it photography. An algorithm writing a prompt is not taking a photograph. It never has. It never will. From an etymological, technical, or philosophical standpoint: NO. The act of photographing is distinct from the act of generating images. And an image is not necessarily a photograph.
Let’s start with etymology. *Photography* comes from the Greek *phos* (light) and *graphein* (to write). Writing with light. Not “image.” Not “representation.” It is the writing—using light—of something standing before the lens at the precise moment the shutter opens. There is a world beforehand. There is a body existing in that world, waiting—perhaps getting soaked in the rain for an hour—in the hope that something might happen, or might not. There is a fraction of a second that will never return. Remove the world, remove the body, remove the light bouncing off something real and passing through a lens: you no longer have photography. You have something else. And different things—out of intellectual honesty, if not for the sake of lexical precision—should be called by different names.
I call it *synthography*. From *syn* (together/synthesis) and *graphein* (to write). Synthetic writing. Writing born not of light, but of the statistical combination of billions of other people’s images, reassembled on demand. Call it “synthetic imaging,” call it messing around, call it whatever you like. But the important thing is that we stop calling it photography, because it isn’t; every time we blur that boundary, we insult what photographers actually do: simply *being there*. This is not even a discussion about hierarchies. I am not saying that one thing is artistically superior to the other—though, between us, I do think so. I am saying that they are two different media with different origins, and that a clear ideological wall must be erected between them. Not a blurred boundary to be debated on a case-by-case basis. A wall. Photography exists—and will always exist—within reality. It involves taking photographs—that is, being physically present in reality, engaging with time, and facing the risk of returning home empty-handed. Of course, one can play within that reality: framing the shot, waiting for the right light, composing the image, or even staging a scene, followed by printing and manipulation in the darkroom or on Photoshop. Yet the genesis—the foundational act—remains rooted in reality. The photographer starts with something that exists and writes it with light. *Synthography*, by contrast, begins with a text. A prompt. No world out in front, no waiting, no risk. Different genesis, different nature, different name.
And this brings us to the practical—not merely theoretical—aspect of the matter: what is already happening. At the recent Festival of Italian Photography, photographs and AI-generated images were mixed together in the same space, without a clear distinction for the viewer. Confusion ensues. And there is a strong suspicion that, at times, this confusion is intentional rather than accidental: it generates headlines, sparks debate, and creates an aura of “contemporaneity.” It also serves those who—lacking understanding—cannot discern or make the necessary distinction. And if you think about it, this suits the system perfectly. Smargiassi himself has long written about this, citing episodes such as Boris Eldagsen at the Sony World Photography Awards or the reportage on the war in Ukraine generated by Barbara Zanon using Midjourney: the risk of manipulation is real when the public lacks the tools to distinguish between the two. He asks whether *synthographs* should be “confined to some sort of enclosure.” His response, however, is lukewarm: no fences, no labels, no policing—just a critical spirit and methodical doubt. And I consider this soft approach absolutely wrong.
Yes, I disagree. A critical spirit is useful, certainly. But without a different name and a clear wall between the two practices, the critical spirit lacks the very vocabulary it needs to operate. You cannot critically question something while continuing to call it by the same name as the thing you wish to distinguish it from. Labels are not censorship; they are the precondition for the critical thinking Smargiassi himself calls for.
Perhaps—and I emphasize *perhaps*—confusion arises more easily among those who have always engaged in desktop publishing (to oversimplify: photographic compositing) rather than “real” photography. Among those who have never had to grapple with a reality that refuses to obey, with light that fails to arrive, with a subject who walks away before the shutter clicks, or with that person wandering into the background—someone who might be a distraction or might actually work, bringing either serendipity or merely a touch of tolerance to a composition where the overall content ultimately outweighs that specific detail. For those who have always worked within software, the distinction between “constructing an image” and “writing with light” has never been an issue. For those who have been photographing since...
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