Was "Self‐Portrait as a Drowned Man" thought of as great art at the time it was taken in 1840? Or was its status as great art a retroactive judgement with the perspective of time by people after 1840?

Not being familiar with the piece, so I looked it up. Seems like it was a protest correspondence aimed at a specific institution, not a public artwork. It doesn't appear to have been exhibited, reviewed, or discussed in print in 1840. Mostly circulated privately.

So I don't think it's a good test. Because you're asking me to point out an equivalent piece in the billions of generative art produced in these six years that would be judged by future historians to have great artistic value. If we were both back in 1840, we both wouldn't be able to point out "Self‐Portrait as a Drowned Man" either. It never posed itself as art at the time, and we'd have to know what future art historians thought.

Yes, I stand by the "lacking perspective" comment, because your judgements on photography and what's considered art are from the current modern point of view, rather than putting yourself in the shoes of those judging photography when it first came out--which is the shoes we find ourselves wearing when it comes to judging generative images, because the alternative (retrospectively judging it from the future) is unavailable to us.

Hence, my core argument still stands. In what way is photography different than generated images, where in photography is considered art because humans can exercise their creative judgement, but in generative images isn't because humans cannot exercise their creative judgement?

To argue against my own stance, the tact you should have taken could have been:

If one major component of art is the human judgement, how could humans could be credited for exercising any judgement at all when prompting, when LLMs are at the end of the pipe? And if they're at all intelligence, what's to say they're not superseding our intentions with their own?