Jonathan Ducrest on AI, Creativity and Photography in a Changing World

Jonathan Ducrest is an award-winning Swiss photographer whose work explores architecture, landscapes, and the quiet atmosphere of places. His acclaimed Lockdown LA series documented an empty Los Angeles during the first weeks of the pandemic, revealing how absence can become as powerful a subject as presence.

We spoke with Jonathan about the creative process behind his work, the future of photography in the age of AI, the importance of the human eye, and the images that continue to inspire him. He also explains why InkPoster offers a new way to experience photography by bringing together the best qualities of both digital and analog art.

Architecture That Sparked Love of Photography

What made me realize I could live from my work was the first corporate contract I got back in 2019 with Netflix, when I lived in Los Angeles. I worked on shooting Los Angeles for a new office building they were opening in Hollywood. It was for an entire floor on the theme of Los Angeles and its various neighborhoods but also with some images for their private air terminal. So that would have been the time.

From a young age, I became interested in architecture. But after finishing school and doing a one-week internship with an architect, I decided to go into something completely different, which was more of a safe placeholder – an apprenticeship. I regret not going into photography at the time, but back then, it was certainly a little more complicated to come out of the school and get hired right away. I needed to find a career where I knew I could finish my studies and get hired. But I've always been passionate about architecture and interior design.

Photography Begins with Passion

There has to be a connection with what you photograph, what you're capturing. Whether it's a person or a building, you have to be passionate about your subject. It's not always necessarily easy or possible, but you really have to try, because it will come through in the image you capture and the final result.

I've definitely covered both landscape and architecture, or travel, and I think for me the architecture is a little more exciting. Trying to show someone's creation in a new light or in a new interpretation is certainly a little more difficult, but in the end more rewarding than just a simple landscape.

If I had to pick one place that I really love shooting, where I can go back at any time and always find something new to photograph or capture in a different light, that would be Palm Springs. I think if you haven't been to Palm Springs, you don't necessarily understand the feeling you get when you're there. Time slows down. It has this really beautiful mid-century architecture. There's one tall building, and the only reason it is there is because someone bribed someone else to build it. But otherwise, everything is pretty low, and there's just this history of the mid-century movement. Going back to Palm Springs is always wonderful.

The Challenge of Photographing Architecture

From my experience, capturing architecture is a bit more complicated than capturing landscapes or nature. You want to give the viewer a good idea of the landmark or the building that's been designed by the architect, and you want to stay true to that vision as well. At the same time, you also need to bring a fresh perspective because many people before you, unless you're the first one to do it, will have captured that building. That said, capturing landscape or travel imagery can also be very interesting, especially depending on the lighting conditions or the weather forecast, as opposed to just a plain blue sky or pretty mountain type of image.

With all the buildings I've captured, there wasn't necessarily a time where the subject was difficult to capture. What is always difficult is that you never know what you're going to find when you get to the place. Of course, if you're able to, you'll go a few days before, or maybe a few weeks before, to get a sense of the place. But often, if you're doing it as a project and you travel to capture a building, you could get there and it's covered in scaffolding, or they removed something that you were really looking forward to catching with the image.

I do like capturing empty or abandoned spaces, whether it's an abandoned water park or a swimming pool or a cool building. There was the water park halfway between Palm Springs and Los Angeles that I would drive past all the time and tell myself, “I want to take a picture of this,” but never stopping. And finally, I decided to do it. Three months later, someone set the slides on fire. The park was going to be destroyed anyway, but this certainly pushed them to move faster because they didn't want any more vandals to set anything on fire in that area. But it also made me realize that when you want to do something, you need to do it right away because you never know. If I had not taken those photos and waited, then that fire could have happened. You never know about the environment – what is going to affect when you're going there.

Lockdown LA and the Power of Empty Spaces

The project of Lockdown LA, which was the book I did on the early weeks of the pandemic while I lived in Los Angeles, was, to me, a natural extension to what I've photographed before. I don't really want to have people in my photographs when it comes to spaces or architecture, because it gives away the time when this photo was taken. You can easily look at what people are wearing, or if there's a car, unless it's a vintage car, you know the model year. You can almost pinpoint the moment in time when the image was taken, and I like the idea of making it difficult to know when the picture was taken. Even with architecture – having one or two people in the image can bring some scale to it, but I do often prefer not to have people and instead have this absence in the image I capture or a blurred presence.

Two Different Worlds: Digital and Analog

There are certainly two worlds when it comes to photography: the analog world and the digital world. While I sometimes work with analog and shooting on film, I much prefer capturing my work digitally. I shoot in medium format to get more control over the exposure and what you're capturing and the level of detail. It is my preferred way of shooting because you have a lot more control. While magic and imperfection can be nice if you're shooting architecture or interiors, it's not something you can really afford to have. But for something more romantic in look, whether it's hospitality images or lifestyle images, including landscape, analog is a really good tool.

Photography After AI

Of course, AI is the big elephant in the room now, considering what it has done and what it can do. It certainly has already changed how people are viewing photography because you no longer know if it's actually a photo that was taken by someone, or if it was created by a computer. And let's remember that if it was created, it's because most of it was stolen to feed the artificial intelligence, because it only creates based on something it knows. It cannot create something that it hasn't been taught on. We already see that there is a backlash against AI, whether it's images or videos, people are growing tired of it.

It's an important tool for a lot of fields, including medicine, for example. But in the artistic world, it's going to be interesting to see how the next one to two, maybe five, years will unfold. I think we'll start seeing something like a stamp, indicating that it was made by a human, not by a machine. I don't think you can replace the human eye, even as a curator, for example. I think a curator is going to have a unique eye to put together an exhibit, as opposed to feeding hundreds of images into a machine and saying, “I want to create an exhibit on that theme, and you have to pick the images.” So it's a useful tool, including for editing, but I think there's nothing that's going to replace the human eye.

Where Photography is Heading

In terms of trends with what we're seeing in the world of photography, for the next few years ahead, I think there's a need for images that make people feel good. Because we live in a world that's constantly moving with  wars, and we've even had a pandemic. I think people want to look at something and be transported to a happy place. And while there are a lot of beautiful images that might be more documentary in style, I think people want to have something that makes them feel good, especially if they're going to have it in their home, something they can escape to.

How InkPoster Bridges the Digital and Analog Worlds

InkPoster bridges the gap that we had with the digital world and the analog world. Most people are experiencing photographs or moving images – films or series – on a backlit screen. Most of it is a small one,  on their phone or tablet. And the other end of the spectrum is printing images, having them beautifully framed so that you can have them in your home. But that can be costly, it's very expensive to get something done properly.

What I really like about InkPoster is that you're able, in a few seconds, to display another photograph or another artwork, while it still looks like a printed photograph. It's not something that's backlit or looks digital, it looks natural.

Photography, Cinema, and Architecture

I look at the influences I draw from for my work. In photography, for example, I really admire Slim Aarons and his amazing career, especially because he went from being a war photographer to deciding that he was done shooting images that were sad. What he wanted to show instead was beautiful people in beautiful places doing beautiful things. Another photographer I really like for his architectural photography is Julius Shulman.   

With the cinematic aspect of some of the images I capture, I really like both Wes Anderson and Paolo Sorrentino because they can tell a story with a single frame, even though they're already telling a story with a film. Just by one frame, they’re giving you something. There are also a lot of architects that I'm very passionate about. But I think Ricardo Bofill is one of my favorites, and also among the mid-century architects, Richard Neutra and Albert Frey, who was Swiss. I really love the designs they created.

I think maybe one of the difficult things as a photographer is to select or curate the work that you want to share because often you could select a lot of photos and someone who's never seen your work, whose job is to curate, might come and say, “this is really good and this one maybe less,” and so on. But it is a great exercise, especially when you put together a book,  to go through your library of images that you’ve captured and to put them together.

That's another thing I like with InkPoster: if I’m having a dinner party, I can go through the app, select the images I want to show and put them all together. I can decide if they stay for an hour, 30 minutes, or less, and they'll change. That sort of reveal of what the next image will be is a pretty cool feature.

The Importance of Perfect Alignment

If I’m going to give advice to someone who wants to get into architectural photography, you do need to have some sort of composition and be able to frame your image in terms of perspective, making sure it aligns with the subject, which is the building. You can train yourself if you don't really have that perfection of aligning things. It helps if you're already a little more into this perfect alignment in your home, whether it's your books or picture frames being aligned. I think it's definitely necessary. Even if you can fix it later with software, you can straighten things up, which is helpful, to do it correctly from the beginning is a big step.