Art In The Age Of Optimization

When you try to automate the artistic process, what happens to artists?

When I was a teenager, a family friend saw my budding interest in film photography and gave me a copy of Saul Leiter’s “Early Color.” It hit me like a truck, as great art often does at that point in your life. I tore through the book, engrossed by the way Leiter managed to turn mundane moments into these evocative, painterly scenes. The drudgery of ever…