Location: Art Talk Area, Luxembourg Art Week
Language: English
Guest Speakers:
Bruce Eesly, Visual Artist
Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director & Curator of Fotografie Forum Frankfurt
Moderated by: Françoise Poos, Artistic and Scientific Director, Elektron
Two hundred years ago, photography was celebrated as a way of making images without the hand of the artist. Today, the hand is exactly where machine-made images give themselves away. The German artist Bruce Eesly takes this as his starting point. In Endangered Gestures (2026), a short film and artist book, words recently removed from official US government websites are paired with hand signs proposed by AI. The gestures look almost innocent and never quite work, and that is precisely what makes them political.
Rather than asking whether AI images are photographs, this conversation looks at the politics of image-making in a digital age: how images are produced, circulated and erased, and how much weight a small, quiet image can carry. With Bruce Eesly (artist) and Celina Lunsford (Artistic Director, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt). Moderated by Françoise Poos (Artistic and Scientific Director, Elektron).
Biographies
Bruce Eesly (b.1984) is a visual artist based in Berlin, Germany. Working with photography, video, archives and generative imaging technologies, he examines how photographic images, classification systems and technological infrastructures shape our understanding of reality. Reimagining archives and speculating on alternative histories, he uses artificial intelligence as both subject and medium in his work. His approach employs humour and a blurring of fact and fiction to question narratives of technological progress and assumptions of photographic truth. Bruce Eesly’s work is held in institutional collections and was presented at the Rencontres d’Arles (FR), C/O Berlin (DE), Ars Electronica (AT), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (DE) and Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival (CN), among others. He was named a Foam Talent and awarded a Prix Ars Electronica for his short film Endangered Gestures in 2026.
Celina Lunsford is the artistic director and curator of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. She is responsible for the exhibitions program, the FFF Academy and is a co-founder and curator for the RAY Triennial of Photography. Her expertise in contemporary global perspectives, as well as 20th century photography are widely recognized; she has curated and written for organisations such as Fundación Mapfre, Fundación Telefonica, Photography Festival Lodz and Lianzhou International Photography Festival and has mentored for the Joop Swart Masterclass, Asia-Europe Foundation Forum for Photographers, Olympus Recommended Award and Vonovia Award for Photography. Recent projects and publications public include, Tony Rizzi. Work Hard, Don’t Lie and Try not to Hurt Anybody (2026), New Beginnings: Philippine Photographic Art (2026), Celebration Imagination, 40 Years FFF (2024); Aïda Muluneh, On the Edge of Past Future, (2024); Ideologies: RAY 2021 (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2021), Peter Fink. My Mind’s Eye (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2020) and Picture Languages, Photographic Art from Georgia (Societäts Verlag, Frankfurt, 2018). In 2022 the University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt named her Honorary Professor, where she teaches curatorial studies and the history of photography.
Françoise Poos is Artistic and Scientific Director of Elektron. She holds a PhD in Visual Culture. She was Programme Director for Esch2022, European Capital of Culture, and is currently Chair of the Board of the Centre Culturel de Rencontre Abbaye de Neumünster, whose mission is to foster intercultural dialogue and support diversity through the arts. She has also served as Chair of the Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg for contemporary art since 2004.
