Boris Eldagsen - The Connoisseur

Technique: Hahnemühle Fine Art Print.
Image size : 26 x 13.87 cm.
Sheet size: 30 × 24 cm.
Exclusive 2022 edition.
Edition: 10 + 2 AP
Signed, dated, and Ed. No. by the artist on the reverse in pencil.

Boris Eldagsen – The Connoisseur

The Connaisseur stages a moment of seemingly profound connoisseurship—and simultaneously exposes it. A man, entirely in the manner of a cultivated expert, examines a picture that itself appears empty. This void is central: it functions as a projection screen for authority, taste, and belief in photographic truth. Eldagsen is playing a double game here. On the one hand, he masterfully quotes the visual language of historical portraits and art historical documentation; on the other, he radically subverts their meaning-making.

The AI ​​generates a scene that appears entirely plausible, without anything to "recognize." The connoisseur makes no judgments—and therein lies the critique. The Connaisseur poses the question of whether, in the age of AI-generated images, expertise is still tied to visible references or merely to rituals of ascription. Photography here no longer appears as a medium of evidence, but as a stage for cultural power gestures.

Eldagsen pushes photography to its zero point: when everything can be convincingly simulated, judgment loses its object. The Connaisseur is a precise, ironic image of the collapse of photographic authority—and of the ease with which we accept it.