I wonder what you mean by ephemerality here, since those images are definitely sloptastic as hell. Compare to works in similar style, like Dorothea Lange[1] or Gerome’s orientalist pictures[2].

Reason why those images are flat and boring is that they are just statistical guesses making a composition averaging whatever the model has been trained with. They would be technically brilliant (if made in oil), but superficial and meaningless, same as so much Sunday painting is.

Same goes with language. Nobody is trying to communicate anything with you, so it just words after another. You can create meaning out of it if you want of course, we homo sapiens -apes excel at that, but what’s the point? Language Jones on YT has pretty good video on this[3].

[1] https://media.mutualart.com/Images/2024_01/12/12/124216388/d...

[2] https://uploads4.wikiart.org/00339/images/jean-leon-gerome/t...

[3] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ORgKY9AlybA&ra=m

Well the examples I gave rise above their ephemerality due to the circumstances that make them memorable. I can remember the details of the story around them — the way the prize winners reacted in each story — in such a way as to contrast them.

The way my memory works (especially as an amateur photographer) I would thus normally have a very good chance of remembering some key details of the images; some fascinating element of each would connect with the rest of the memory.

But it does not happen. Whereas I sometimes remember photos with clarity while forgetting where I even saw them.