It's No Longer About the Most Beautiful Picture

Monday 13 July 2026, 16:32 by Michiel Heijmans | 1,846 views | 11 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

You know the feeling. You scroll past dozens of photos on your phone. Everything is right. The light falls perfectly, the colours are spot on, and there isn't a hint of noise. And yet nothing stays with you. You swipe on, and ten seconds later you can't remember what you saw. We've never taken photos as beautiful as we do now. And rarely have we felt so little.

That doesn't sit right. That's exactly what I want to talk about today. Because something is shifting in photography, and I think 2026 is the year it will really become visible. Everywhere I go, in conversations, on podcasts and during workshops, people are suddenly talking about authenticity. About emotion. About story. And much less about technique. This isn't a hype. It feels more like a correction that was long overdue.

When perfection suddenly becomes free

There is a simple reason why this is happening now. Perfection has become cheap. In a few seconds, AI can create an image that is technically impossible to fault. Flawless light, flawless skin, flawless composition. Endless, and available to everyone. In the past, you had to practise for years to make a technically flawless photo. Now you just type a sentence.

And that's where the sting lies. What everyone can do stops being special. Once the perfect picture is available everywhere and at all times, it loses its value. Not because it's ugly, but because it no longer says anything. It's just there. Like wallpaper.

That's how a strange paradox emerges. The more perfect images we see, the emptier they feel. I catch myself doing it more and more often. A photo can be aesthetically spot on and emotionally cold at the same time. Cleverly made, and yet nothing. As if you're looking at someone who says all the right words, but you can feel that nobody is home.

I noticed it in myself recently. I was looking back through my own work and found myself lingering on a portrait that was nowhere near my best technically. A little too soft, the light not quite right, a bit of movement in it. And that was exactly the image that moved me. Because I still knew exactly who had been sitting in front of me, what we had been talking about and how quiet it had briefly become. The 'mistake' wasn't a mistake. It was proof that something real had happened.

Not how it looks, but why it exists

I think that's why we've started asking a different question. Not anymore: how impressive does this image look? But: why does this image actually exist? Who made it? What story does it contain? And what is it trying to say?

That may seem like a small difference, but it's huge. Because as soon as you ask that question, the value of a photo shifts. Not towards the technique, but towards the maker and the moment. A photo is no longer an artistic end product, but a trace. Proof that someone stood there, looked, waited and pressed the shutter at the right moment. A real encounter, captured.

My real model in this photo: Janaika Wester

I feel that more strongly than ever in my own work. With PAUZE, everything is about presence. About the conversation, the contact and pausing for a moment with the person sitting opposite me. The portrait that comes from it is almost a by-product. The best image never comes from my camera settings. It comes from what happens in that space between two people. You can't plan that, and you certainly can't recreate it.

The process is what AI can never create

And that's the heart of the whole story for me. For years, we've talked about the result, about the photo. But I believe the process is becoming the real work. The waiting. The walking. The conversation. Simply being there.

That's exactly what AI can't do. A model can generate an image that looks like an encounter, but there was no encounter. It can imitate stillness, but it has never stood still. It calculates, guesses and combines. But it hasn't lived, waited or hesitated before pressing the shutter. There is no morning behind it, no conversation, no human being.

Because photography is more than a photo. It is time. It is attention. It is a thousand small choices and one moment of presence. The image you end up with is not the work itself. It is the result of something real that happened beforehand. The photo is the tip. Everything underneath it, the process, is what it is really about.

I think that's where the counter-movement lives. We'll start valuing the 'how' and the 'why' more highly again than the finished result. And once you start valuing the process, you automatically see what a photo really is differently. Then a small mistake is no longer a weakness, but a signature. A sign of life.

In search of stillness

That idea has acquired a name for me. My upcoming exhibition is unofficially called In Search of Stillness, and that's exactly what it is about. The opposite of the fast, perfect, disposable image. About standing still in a world that keeps scrolling.

The title didn't appear out of nowhere. I talked out loud about the photos with Annelie Willemijn Stroo, with whom I am holding the exhibition. It is the connection between her series and mine. The common thread.

The exhibition can be seen at De Drvkkery in Middelburg, from 27 July to 7 September. There's really only one thing I want to ask of the viewer. Slow down. Stand still for a moment. Look for longer than the single swipe we've become used to. Because these images don't reveal themselves in half a second. They ask for a little patience, and they give something back in return.

And there's more. On 13 August, we're organising a photo walk. No hunt for the perfect picture, but walking together and sharing the process. Looking, talking, pausing and occasionally pressing the shutter. It's not about who takes the most beautiful photo. It's about the experience of making it. Keep an eye on my socials for more information. Above all, see it as an invitation, definitely not an obligation!

Back to that empty feeling

Think back to the beginning for a moment. To scrolling past all those perfect images that leave nothing behind. I don't believe we're missing better photos. We already see more than enough of them, increasingly made by a machine. What we're missing is something else. We're missing photos that mean something.

And that's exactly why the imperfect picture is winning. Not because imperfection is beautiful in itself, but because a real image carries the entire process with it. The time it contains. The attention. The encounter. The moment when everything briefly went quiet. That's what fills a photo, and that's exactly what you can't generate. The perfect picture is empty because nobody was there. The imperfect picture moves you because someone was there.

So the next time you scroll through your feed, ask yourself a different question. Not: which photo is the best made here? But: when was the last time I really looked at a photo, instead of simply scrolling past it?

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