Boris Eldagsen - The Deal

Technique : Hahnemühle Fine Art Print.
Image size: 26 x 13.42 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 Deal

The Deal depicts an archetypal gesture of exchange—while simultaneously stripping it of any economic or moral certainty. Two hands, an object, an invisible contract. What is being traded here remains unclear: a commodity, a promise, a sacrifice? The visual language is reminiscent of postwar social documentary photography, of scenes of scarcity and improvisation. Yet the logic of the action is fragile. Proportions, materiality, and sequences of events do not coalesce into a coherent reality.

This is precisely where the strength of AI lies. It creates a situation that is visually credible but semantically collapses. The AI ​​simulates not only an image but also the expectation that this image "means something." Eldagsen uses this void to detach photography from its implicit promise of truth. The deal is struck—but without reference, without context, without reassurance.

As a self-proclaimed "gravedigger of photography," Eldagsen demonstrates here that in the age of AI, photographic images no longer bear witness but represent negotiations: about power, trust, and credibility. The Deal is not a document of an exchange, but an image about the conditions under which we still want to trust images.