British Journal of Photography
Issue 7925
Ghost in the Machine
1854
English
Edited by Diane Smyth
Softcover
194 pages
233 x 302 mm
2026
ISSN 9770007119142
Taking Ghost in the Machine as its starting point, this issue examines photography as a technological system shaped by both human intention and machine logic. As artificial intelligence and automated vision become increasingly embedded in how images are produced and read, the issue asks what photography reveals – and what it obscures – when agency is shared between people and devices. Throughout, photography appears not as a neutral recorder, but as a medium marked by absence, distortion, and unease. Lisa Barnard’s You Only Look Once extends her research into automated seeing, constructing a disorienting encounter with perception itself, while Bharat Sikka’s Elephant in the Room uses a language model trained on his own archive to generate new images. Curating an exhibition on AI, Alison Weaver points to the uncanny gaps in understanding that persist even for those building the systems. Elsewhere, curators Max Gorbatskyi and Viktoria Bavykina explore how images function in the war in Ukraine, where drones, new media, and art are entwined in contemporary conflict. Alongside this, analogue photography resurfaces as a haunted counterpart. Åsa Johannesson and Johny Pitts both work with film, embracing imperfection, obsolescence, and inherited tools to expose photography’s lingering strangeness. Found images, archives, and studios under threat are revisited by Aikaterini Gegisian, Keisha Scarville, Rehaf Al Batniji and an anonymous artist from Iran, underscoring photography’s role in memory, testimony, and survival.
(Source: https://www.thebjpshop.com/product/issue-7925-jan-mar-2026-ghost-in-the-machine/)
About the Magazine
British Journal of Photography is a photography magazine that includes in-depth articles, profiles of photographers, analyses, and technological reviews. The magazine was established in Liverpool as the Liverpool Photographic Journal in 1854, with its first issue appearing on 14 January 1854, making it the United Kingdom’s second-oldest photographic title after the Photographic Journal. It was printed monthly until 1857, when it became the Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal, published bi-weekly, then the Photographic Journal from 1859 to 1860, when it obtained its present name. The magazine moved to London in 1864, first to Covent Garden; then in 2007 to Soho; and in 2013 to Shoreditch; then in 2017 to East India Dock. It was published weekly from 1864 to March 2010, then reverted to its original monthly period. It is now also available as an electronic magazine, online, and in iPad and iPhone formats.
https://www.1854.photography/home/
(Source: https://www.1854.photography/about/)
About the Publisher
1854 Media publish the British Journal of Photography. They are an award-winning photography publication house.
https://www.1854.photography/home/
(Source: https://www.1854.photography/about/)
