Frame by Frame: Surviving the Collapse of Legacy Media as a Visual Creative

Photographers, filmmakers, and image-makers in the age of the algorithm

There’s a silence that’s fallen over the creative industries — not loud like a crash, but hollow like an abandoned soundstage. The magazines we once dreamed of are folding quietly; campaign budgets are cut in half, and the word “photographer” has been replaced by “content creator” on most briefs. We scroll past our own work in tiny thumbnails, wondering who we’re making it for. Somewhere between AI-generated visuals, disappearing credits, and algorithm-fuelled aesthetics, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s real — or worse, what’s valuable.

But maybe there’s something growing in that quiet. Something we’re meant to rebuild.

The Gallery Has Been Replaced by the Grid

Once, a photographer’s work was judged in print, hung in galleries, chosen by editors, critics, and curators. Now, it’s filtered, cropped, compressed, and scrolled past in under a second. The curator has been replaced by the algorithm — a constantly shifting, opaque mechanism that rewards frequency over depth, sameness over strangeness.

To survive this system, many of us have adapted. We shoot vertically for stories, reformat portfolios into carousels, chase reels, post behind-the-scenes to appease the content gods. Our once considered work — slow, sculpted, intentional — becomes fragmented into digestible scraps. A film still becomes a meme. A portrait becomes a moodboard. A shoot becomes a trend. But what is lost in this translation? The algorithm, in all its ubiquity, doesn’t care for nuance. It can’t see the hours in the edit, the choreography of a lighting setup, the trust between photographer and subject. It flattens intimacy. It doesn’t reward subtlety. And for many image-makers, this shift doesn’t just affect how work is seen — it changes how it’s made. We begin to pre-edit in our minds. Will this get saved? Will it get shared? Would it “perform”? Suddenly, our artistic compass — once guided by emotion, aesthetic, or narrative — starts twitching toward something far less soulful: what works on Instagram.

This isn’t a cry for the past. It’s an observation of the now. The truth is, the platform is the gallery now. And the audience isn’t quiet, contemplative, or specialist — they’re fast, distracted, and infinite. That’s not necessarily bad. But it means the creative, to survive, must find a way to hold on to intention inside the noise.

When the Eye is a Machine

In 2023, an AI-generated image won a photography prize. It was later revealed that the artist entered it deliberately, as a provocation — to test the boundaries of authorship, and to raise a question that now haunts us all: what is a photograph if no one was there to take it? AI can now mimic the grain of film, the softness of a lens flare, even the compositional instincts of a seasoned eye. It can composite faces that have never existed, invent outfits that never touched skin, or build entire visual worlds in the time it takes us to upload a RAW file. For commercial clients — efficiency. For creatives — existential dread. Because at its core, photography is an act of witnessing. To make an image is to say: I was here. I saw this. I chose this frame. AI threatens that very intimacy. And yet, we can’t ignore it. We’re already living alongside it. Some artists are using AI to enhance their work — training models on their own archives to extend visual languages, or blending machine-generated backdrops with analogue portraits. Others resist entirely, returning to film, wet plate, hand-drawn storyboards. There's a divide emerging: those who adapt and those who anchor. But maybe the more interesting question isn’t will AI replace us? — it’s what do we have that it can’t replicate? Intuition. Lived experience. Mistakes. Memory. An algorithm can learn aesthetics. But it cannot feel the tension between photographer and subject. It cannot read a silence in a room. It cannot mourn. The future of the image may well be synthetic — but the soul of it still belongs to those who know how to look.

Beyond the Feature, Beyond the Feed

For years, legacy meant being published. Being booked. Being seen in the right places, by the right people, at the right time. It meant being validated by institutions — magazines, agencies, film festivals, galleries — all of them once powerful enough to shape careers with a single feature or commission. But those gatekeepers are fading. The titles we grew up idolising are folding or ghosting their contributors. Agencies are leaning into AI models. Even film festivals, once the strongholds of cinema, are changing shape to meet market demand. The rules have shifted — and with them, the idea of what it means to leave something behind.

Now, legacy might mean something quieter. More personal. A handmade book that circulates between artists. An archive of analogue prints, never posted online. A short film shown in a local hall, remembered for its truth, not its reach. For me, legacy has become about building something I can stand inside. That’s why I made Cutler. That’s why I started Le R Cut. Not because I was done with the old systems, but because I realised they were no longer built to hold the kind of work I wanted to make. Work that’s layered, unrushed, sometimes strange. Work that isn’t algorithm-friendly but is memory-rich. There is power in shaping your own platform. Not because it guarantees success, but because it restores authorship. You decide the pace. You decide the frame. And maybe that’s the most radical kind of legacy: to create outside of permission.

Beyond Survival, Towards Reimagining

We’re in a time of creative reinvention. Where once we fought for permission, now we make our own space. We’ve been told for so long that the measure of success is bigger numbers, more followers, higher budgets. But the truth is, we are not bound by those rules anymore.

The shift isn’t about rejecting the new ways of making — it’s about finding what you can do within them, and what you’re willing to preserve. Whether it’s through AI, social media, or other emerging technologies, the future of the image isn’t about us versus them. It’s about rethinking what it means to be truly seen. Maybe that means choosing intimacy over scale. Maybe it means moving towards nostalgia, creating artifacts, or reaching back to traditional methods. Maybe it’s about taking the time to cultivate relationships, to build a body of work that feels like home rather than a highlight reel. But in all of this, there’s one truth that remains: the work — the art, the film, the photograph — it still matters. More than ever.

So here’s to building what we want. What makes us proud, what makes us real. Because, in the end, legacy isn’t about the platform you use, or the audience you reach. It’s about the image you make, and who it touches.

Written by Scarlett warrick