Article cover
Essay

Open Access

Present or Absent? Reframing Photographic Discovery and Interpretation with Computer Vision

Tracy Stuber

Published online:

06 Oct 2025

Abstract

Abstract

Computer vision, a branch of artificial intelligence aimed at understanding digital images, promises to help backlogged archives make their digitized collections more discoverable. However, resonances between this new technology and the history of photography make its application in photographic archives practically and methodologically fraught, especially with images of people. This article describes a critical, pared-back approach to person detection, a common computer vision task, designed in response to the shared physiognomic underpinnings of computer vision and photography. Reframing person detection around the question of presence and absence, it demonstrates how computer vision can enable archival discovery beyond its historically textual and classificatory limits.

Other articles in this issue:

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Issues

Volume 88 (2025)
Volume 87 (2024)
Volume 86 (2023)
Volume 85 (2022)
Volume 84 (2021)
Volume 83 (2020)
Volume 82 (2019)
Volume 81 (2018)
Volume 80 (2017)
Volume 79 (2016)

Get instant, unlimited access to this journal

Related titles

Would you like to receive monthly information about new publications and events?

DKV
EUR
English

Deutscher Kunstverlag

Genthiner Straße 13

10785 Berlin

+49 (0)30 / 27 90 76 - 0

Neumarkter Straße 28

81673 München

Contact us for book orders