Since its invention, the human has stood at the center of photography: the human eye, whose limitations are exposed by the camera’s omnipotent “gaze”; human memory, for which the photographic image serves as a prosthesis; and humanity’s defiant struggle against death, for which photography stands as evidence. Twentieth-century photographic discourse closely linked the image to death, transience, and the desire to escape it. But is photography only about humans? What new layers of meaning emerge if we situate it beyond human historiography, and within a broader, more universal framework of relations?

Certain approaches open the study of the medium toward geology. Media philosopher and artist Joanna Zylinska [1] suggests that the photographic image can be understood in parallel with the fossil, as an imprint or “biofilm”: both exist in an indexical relationship to their objects while condensing time within themselves. This analogy reveals that the past had been continuously recording itself long before the emergence of photography, inscribing its “here and now” into geological strata. Just as light has always left its traces in nature and on the surface of human skin, however, the act of fixing those traces came only later. From this perspective, photography was not invented but discovered, long latent within the processes of impressioning that shape history. Zylinska’s geological perspective foregrounds nonhuman dimensions, allowing the history of photography to move beyond human-centered narratives and motivations. In relation to nonhuman agencies, photography becomes a story of encounters between matter and form, mediated by sunlight as the life-giving energy that renders these encounters visible. Seen this way, photography need not remain bound to death but can participate in the ongoing cycles of life’s regeneration. In the face of urgent social, political, economic, and increasingly critical ecological challenges, photography calls for fundamentally new interpretative frameworks.

The works of members of the Studio of Young Photographers engage with the biosphere in diverse ways – by using analog techniques or found imagery, extending their installations into the space, and binding their photographs into books. In their collaborative project, Noémi Ábrahám and Róbert Nunkovics observe the flickering light dancing across the surface of the Danube, translating this simple yet relentlessly captivating phenomenon into the controlled space of the gallery using industrial glass bricks. In Kíra Krász’s hand-crafted montages, trees as natural habitats intersect with archival images of historical architecture and interiors. The built spaces emerging within tree hollows and foliage preserve traces of an era defined by time-intensive craftsmanship and durable material culture. In Csaba Benedek’s analog photo series, a boy seeks connection with his father, who disappears each dawn into the underground sewer network maintained by the Budapest Sewage Works. His labor sustains one of the most fundamental conditions of urban life: the safe management of wastewater. The images juxtapose industrial landscapes with organic matter drifting on the surface of sewage, reflecting the complex relationship between father and son while revealing the hidden conditions of an often overlooked, invisible form of labor. The installation by Domonkos Németh and Júlia Csapó explores the layered relationship between nature and humanity through a photographic print-washing tank fitted with a water circulation system, where flowing water connects five transparent plexiglass layers. The work reflects on image-making and interpretation as processes of accumulation, separation, and reconfiguration of meaning against the backdrop of prior knowledge. It highlights the ambiguity of perspective and the extent to which perception is shaped by what we already know — foregrounding the uncertainties of seeing, sensing, and representation. Áron Tóth-Heyn’s De rerum natura examines the dialogue between living and non-living, natural and artificial realms, conceiving the world as a single, indivisible continuum. Within the tensions of the Anthropocene and the Technocene, the work reconsiders the notion of human nature. Drawing on Michelangelo Pistoletto’s concept of the Third Paradise, the series unfolds in three chapters that explore the merging of natural and artificial environments and their possible synthesis, opening new perspectives on human–nature cooperation. In Lilla Váczi’s slow, undulating experimental film, aligned with the found footage genre, a loose narrative emerges from sequences of nighttime recordings captured by weather-monitoring webcams across the country. These cameras act as vigilant human eyes, attempting to render nature predictable — yet these barely composed images often reveal unexpected and striking visual phenomena. Branches swaying in the dark, droplets of water, and shifting storm clouds exert a distinctive visual and emotional force.

Moving beyond an anthropocentric perspective, technical image-making becomes not merely a tool in the struggle against mortality but part of the world’s ongoing process of self-inscription. The photograph is not a closed endpoint but an imprint embedded within a broader ecological cycle – one through which future generations may come to reassess our present condition.

[1] Zylinska, J. (2017). Nonhuman Photography. MIT Press.

Text: Eszter Albert, Dorottya Balkó, Szofi Varga