The Show. A Pop-Up Gallery hosted by CRXSS

At our recent pop up gallery, we brought together four brilliant voices to discuss where photography is heading next: Will Thacker, Co Founder and Creative Partner at 20 Something; Jo Borton, Global Operations Lead at Publicis Productions; Isabelle Doran, CEO of the AOP; and photographer Sebastian Nevols.

Against a backdrop spanning wet plate photography to AI generated environments, the panel explored an industry caught between extraordinary opportunity and genuine uncertainty. More photographs are being made and shared than ever before, yet the people behind them have rarely felt so challenged.

A few things stayed with us:

1. We need to restore respect for the craft.

As impossible scenes become increasingly easy to generate, are we losing sight of what it takes to make a truly extraordinary image?

That does not mean AI imagery is without craft. Quite the opposite. Creating something genuinely beautiful with AI still requires an understanding of image making, composition, light and visual language, rather than simply leaning on familiar visual tropes.

Perhaps the challenge is not AI itself, but making sure we continue to recognise the craft behind the image.

2. Is the pitch helping creativity, or getting in its way?

We talked about the enormous amount of work that goes into the agency pitch and photographer treatment, and how that process can help unravel a brief, develop an idea and demonstrate where a client’s investment is going.

But when pitches take days of creative work, do they leave enough room for experimentation, risk and genuinely original thinking?

3. What will the creative agency of the future actually look like?

Will large agencies continue to lead the way? Will smaller independents become more agile and creatively valuable? Or are we heading towards something entirely new?

There were no definitive answers, which perhaps felt appropriate for a conversation about the future.

The more interesting question is: what do we want that future to look like, and what are we doing now to build it?

A huge thank you to our panellists, everyone who joined us, and to GripVan and Genesis Metro for helping make the exhibition and conversation possible.