Long before everybody started to discuss Artificial Intelligence, which in many applications takes the form of transformation of a textual prompt into an Image, Photographers have had literature or quotations in their mind that shaped their images. This was a kind of poetic imagery not always easy to recognize. The exhibition in the „Institut de France“, Bibliothèques Mazarine (LINK), with photographs by Nicolas Fève (LINK) offfers a great insight into this way to conceive of an image and its realization through photography. Exposing the sources of inspiration as well as the photo is like adding textual citations to an image in a much more inspirational and transforming manner than AI is doing these days in 2025.
Text to image is only one out of the many ways texts might guide imagination, but it is a powerful and gripping one. The history of literature is full of other forms like videos based on novels, comic strips to make classic texts in Latin more accessible. As we shall ask AI products like texts and images to cite their sources and honor authorship, photography as art and science might enhance the literary experience by adding citations to an image. This has the additional advantage that more people will follow up on the sources of inspiration.