Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020

This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes. 

Anna Näslund

I am professor of Art History at Stockholm University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. My research focuses on visual culture, picture theory and digitization.  The project Selling Pic traces the genealogy of contemporary AI-generated image hype over 200 years of promoting technologies for the production, reproduction, and circulation of pictures on a mass scale. It aims to understand the historical role of pictures not merely as commodities but as agents of commerce. The project focuses on emerging picture techniques in the 1820s, 1920s, and 2020s, examining iconographic and discursive patterns in pictures of mass reproduction (metapictures) and comparing vernacular picture theories—expressed in advertising copy and trade journalism—with canonical picture theories. Rooted in historical material practices, the project seeks to clarify and expand our understanding of how and why pictures play a central role in the work of selling in modern and contemporary societies.

Instructions for subscribing to IFFS calendar with your Outlook account. Log in to Outlook Kalender. Click on Add calendar and choose From internet: A screen pops up to the right of the screen, add the fo

Journal Version Physical Review E 99 Abstract A detailed Monte Carlo study of the satisfiability threshold for random 3-SAT has been undertaken. In combination with a monotonicity assumption we find tha

Current research in ecological and social psychology, vol 3 Abstract The tightness of a society is defined as the strength of social norms and the degree of sanctioning within the society. However, a so

Anandi Hattiangadi, Professor of Philosophy at Stockholm University. ABSTRACT Recent empirical work on implicit cognition has revealed that many of us display biases in behaviour which are unavailable t

Gustaf Arrhenius, Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, is known for his research on our moral obligations to future generations and on issues in democratic theory. On November th

2011. Physica A 390:3996-4001. The graph-navigability problem concerns how one can find as short paths as possible between a pair of vertices, given an incomplete picture of a graph. We study the navigab

July 24 to 26 Essex university arrange Understanding Society Research Conference. Institute employee Kenisha Russell Jonsson gives a lecture with "Cohabitation or Marriage? The socioeconomic and famil

Stefan Svallfors gave a lecture called:  "Politics as Organized Combat: New Players and New Rules of the Game in Sweden” at Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin March 24th. Read more about the lecture. Read m