Illuminatory Imaginism

Transmuting Visionary Imagery into Unreal Photography**

Abstract

This paper proposes a contemporary artistic practice that transforms esoteric or visionary imagery into photographic-appearing images that depict realities which never existed. Beginning with imagined scenes or painterly visions—whether produced by human hand or generated through AI—the practice employs artificial intelligence as an alchemical medium to transmute symbolic, uncanny, or visionary forms into images that appear real, documentary, and photographic. The process resists fixed outcomes, procedural control, and aesthetic normalisation, instead privileging anomaly, mutation, and subjective artistic judgement. The resulting images occupy a liminal space between imagination and realism, offering a form of unreal photography rooted in inner vision rather than external capture.

1. Introduction

Photography has traditionally been understood as a medium that captures external reality through light, optics, and physical presence. Painting, by contrast, has long been associated with imagination, symbolism, and inner vision. This practice deliberately unsettles that distinction.

Rather than photographing the external world, this approach creates photographic realities from inner vision. Visionary or esoteric imagery—often first expressed as painting or imagined scenes—is transformed through AI into images that look photographic, even though they document nothing that ever existed.

The result is neither photography nor painting, but a hybrid form: unreal photography—images that wear the surface language of realism while retaining the logic of vision, symbolism, and anomaly.

2. Origin of the Practice: Visionary Imagery

At the core of this practice lies visionary imagery: images that emerge from imagination, inner visualisation, symbolic thinking, or intuitive vision. These images often possess qualities that resist realism:

• distorted scale

• symbolic objects

• uncanny figures

• impossible spatial relationships

• mythic or liminal atmospheres

Such imagery may be expressed through:

• physical painting

• digital painting

• imagined scenes articulated through language

• AI-assisted image generation guided by inner vision

The painting or visionary image is not a sketch to be perfected, but a seed—a charged symbolic form that carries affect, meaning, and strangeness.

3. Transmutation Through AI

Artificial intelligence is not used here as a tool of precision or control, but as a transmutational medium.

Much like alchemy, the process does not guarantee results. AI introduces variability, mutation, and unpredictability. When a visionary image is passed through AI and combined with photographic visual language, the image undergoes a metamorphosis:

• symbolic forms acquire realistic textures

• impossible scenes adopt documentary lighting

• painterly logic infects photographic structure

The aim is not to “correct” the image into realism, but to allow realism to be contaminated by vision.

AI functions as an intermediary between:

• the inner and the outer

• the imagined and the credible

• the symbolic and the photographic

4. Variability and Artistic Discretion

There are no fixed rules governing resemblance, fidelity, or outcome.

The final image may:

• closely resemble the original vision

• loosely echo it

• radically diverge from it

• preserve specific symbols

• or collapse the vision into pure anomaly

All such outcomes are valid.

The degree of resemblance is entirely at the discretion of the artist. Control is partial, porous, and negotiated rather than absolute. The artist’s role is not to command results, but to recognise when an image holds aesthetic charge.

Here, authorship lies in:

• selection

• refusal

• judgement

• sensitivity to anomaly

5. The Role of Anomaly

Anomaly is not a flaw in this practice—it is the primary aesthetic engine.

Images are valued not for perfection, clarity, or coherence, but for moments where reality feels subtly wrong:

• distorted proportions

• misaligned bodies

• implausible scale

• emotional incongruity

• spatial inconsistency

These anomalies prevent closure. They keep the image liminal—hovering between belief and disbelief.

If an image resolves too cleanly, it fails.

6. Liminal Realism

The resulting images occupy a liminal photographic space. They resemble photographs closely enough to feel witnessed, yet remain impossible upon closer inspection.

This liminality produces tension:

• the image appears real

• the logic is not

The viewer is left in a state of uncertainty, forced to negotiate meaning without resolution. This uncertainty is intentional.

7. The Artist as Aesthetic Reader

Rather than acting as technician or engineer, the artist operates as an aesthetic reader—someone who reads images for resonance, tension, and symbolic vitality.

The artist decides:

• when an image lives

• when it resolves too much

• when anomaly is productive

• when realism overwhelms vision

This role is intuitive, interpretive, and experiential rather than procedural.

8. Conclusion

This practice proposes a new form of image-making that generates photography from imagination rather than reality. By transmuting visionary imagery into photographic-appearing scenes through AI, it opens a space where realism and imagination coexist without reconciliation.

There is no singular method, no prescribed outcome, and no hierarchy of correctness. What matters is the preservation of anomaly, the refusal of closure, and the artist’s capacity to recognise when an image holds meaning.

In an age saturated with images that claim to represent reality, this practice instead produces images that question what reality looks like, offering unreal photographs born not from the world, but from vision.