Algorithmic Photography exhibition, April, London
· exhibition
Alex May's Algorithmic Photography series was brought together in a retrospective exhibition at BCS in London, tracing eight years of work on time, memory, and computer vision.
Alex May’s Algorithmic Photography exhibition opened at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT in London on 2 April 2024, running there until 31 May 2024 before continuing at Phoenix, Leicester from June to August. The exhibition brought together twenty images from across eight years of work, offering the first broad overview of a body of work that uses bespoke computer vision software to turn recorded duration into dense still compositions.
The series is built through a multistage process of video capture, motion detection, and colour-space transformation, producing images that compress several minutes into a single frame. Subjects range from ant swarms and starling murmurations to wind farms and New York taxis, but the underlying concern remains consistent: how digital systems can reshape what is seen, remembered, and preserved.
Presented as a retrospective exhibition, the show made clear how central this approach has become within May’s wider practice. Rather than treating photography as a frozen instant, these works use algorithmic selection to construct layered records of change, turning everyday movement into a form of visual memory. An opening event on 2 April 2024 also included an artist talk at the venue, extending the exhibition’s role as a public reflection on time, perception, and machine vision.
Further details were published by the Computer Arts Society.