Boris Eldagsen

Biography

Boris Eldagsen is a German artist based in Berlin, born in 1970. He studied photography and visual arts in Mainz, conceptual art in Prague and fine art in Hyderabad, India, and he also studied philosophy at the universities of Cologne and Mainz. His work in photomedia investigates the unconscious mind and mixes the sublime with the uncanny. He has lectured since 2004 and began teaching workshops on AI-generated imagery in late 2022. He uses the term promptography for his prompt-based work. In April 2023 he refused a Sony World Photography Award for PSEUDOMNESIA: The Electrician, an image he made with AI, to start a public debate about photography and generated images. The Guardian called it the picture that stopped the world. His other bodies of work include TRAUMA PORN, THE POSTHUMAN CONDITION and the video works PETRICK'S PURGATORY and THE WELL. His installation THIS IS NOT ART was shown at Meta.Morf in Trondheim. His work has been shown at Fridericianum in Kassel, Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Noorderlicht in Groningen, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai. In 2025 he curated PSYCHOPOMP! at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography in Johannesburg and RIVALS at EMOP Berlin, both about the difference between photography and AI images. He is a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Photographie and its AI task force. For collectors, he is a key figure in the discussion about how AI images relate to photography.