Curators organising a photography salon in the early decades of the twenty-first century face a serious dilemma. If art salons of any period amount to little more than occasional “fleet parades”—sporadic displays of one or more photographs by artists selected according to this or that criterion—then, in my view, they fail to fulfil their purpose. One might even say that they represent an unnecessary expenditure of money, energy and other resources, justified only by historical precedent: the fact that this form of presentation has existed for centuries.
What resources are available to curators at any given time? Artists may be selected according to a variety of principles. The works of the participating authors may be organised around a theme, or chronological or other restrictions may be imposed. Curators may determine the list of participants in advance, or they may open the process entirely, granting every applicant the opportunity to present their work. Any of these approaches may yield interesting results, provided they do not obscure the true aim: the task of a salon exhibition is to offer an account of whether, over the course of five years, a particular artistic field—in this case photography as a whole—has advanced, and if so, in what direction, to what extent and by what means.
One might argue, of course, that five years is but a fleeting moment in the development of an art form. In general, this is true. However, there are crucial periods when a new tendency, a new technique or a new visual approach can fundamentally alter the entire field, or at least initiate a significant transformation, setting long-established artistic canons in motion. We are living in such a moment. Image-making by means of artificial intelligence has entered public awareness, everyday practice and, gradually, artistic self-expression. It is no longer merely a new gadget or procedure but a mode of image creation capable of challenging the philosophical foundations of photography. Images assembled by artificial intelligence, generated in response to spoken or written prompts and drawing on tens of millions of stored pictures (many of them obtained without authorisation), may open new dimensions for artistic creation. The technology is still in its infancy, yet it is already making its presence felt and signalling its arrival. A salon exhibition of photography that seeks to reflect the developments of the past five years must, in my view, also address this tendency. A vast array of experiments, offshoots and unsuccessful attempts has already appeared, and many more will undoubtedly follow. We must accept that only through such tentative and sometimes stumbling advances can photography arrive at previously unseen results. The most sensible approach, therefore, is to regard AI not as a substitute for human creativity but as a tool that may serve it, opening numerous new possibilities without displacing the human psyche, emotion, intuition and imaginative vision. For it can be stated with certainty that there is no good photograph without a powerful vision, a coherent concept or a clear idea (one might simply call it inspiration). With this in mind, works jointly produced by artists and artificial intelligence form one section of the 2026 National Salon of Photography. This section seeks, as far as possible, to identify images worthy of presentation and to reveal certain tendencies, directions and, indeed, dead ends.
Many artists pursue the path of artistic self-expression, moving in different directions and at different speeds, each following their own ambitions. Every path has a right to exist, and each might well deserve to be presented. However, no exhibition venue in the world could provide sufficient space to accommodate them all. A decision therefore had to be made as to which direction to take when organising the present salon. I have already outlined the options available to the curators, and we eventually reached a decision. The main factor in selecting the participants was a major undertaking running parallel with the salon: a large-scale book project aimed at presenting a comprehensive overview of Hungarian photographic art through the work of three hundred photographers. My fellow curator, András Bán, discusses this project in greater detail, and I warmly recommend his text to the reader. The principle itself may be debated—and undoubtedly will be— but it is ultimately the outcome that will confirm or refute any criticism. The more than one hundred photographers selected in this way approach their declared or implicit aim—building a coherent oeuvre in a constantly changing and evolving world—along many different routes. These routes may be defined and named in various ways, much like real roads, yet together they correspond broadly to the map of contemporary photography.
Below are the principles according to which the photographs in the different halls have been arranged. It must be emphasised that the categories are by no means rigid, since a single photograph might easily belong in more than one place. This is entirely natural, for one of the defining characteristics of works of art is their vigorous resistance to strict classification. We readily acknowledge—what else could we do?—that the following divisions are strongly subjective, reflecting the views and curatorial concepts behind the exhibition.
The traditional broad avenue, viewed from a certain historical perspective (I deliberately refrain from referring to it as a movement), is documentary photography aimed at social criticism. Here one frequently encounters reportage- like photographs or photo essays, sometimes driven by strong social commitment, although personal and subjective viewpoints are equally present. The subjects range from the artist’s immediate surroundings to wider communities and even humanity as a whole. The themes typically include fundamental issues affecting contemporary society: loneliness, wars, migration, widening social inequality, environmental destruction, desertification, violence at many levels, discrimination cloaked in religious rhetoric, as well as questions relating to feminism and gender. Reimagined landscape and environmental photographs that convey meanings beyond their immediate subject also belong within this broad category.
Another route, increasingly accessible to contemporary artists, is intimate, diary-like photography that emphatically draws its material from everyday life. Such images portray the photographer and/or their family in ordinary or extreme situations. In other cases the central subject is the body or the intimate domestic environment, occasionally combined with highly professional techniques and at times deliberately adopting the visual language of private photography. Role-play, disguise, the exposure or concealment of the self frequently appear in these works as tools for exploring identity. Photographs emerging along this path often function as complex forms of self-representation, full of layers and detours that offer rich material for viewers willing to engage with them.
A busy and widely travelled route is conceptual photography, where the initial idea—the concept formed in the mind—is often more important than the aesthetic form in which it is realised. This type of image-making frequently employs series and sequences, unexpected installation elements and, at times, combinations of visual and linguistic signs. It often approaches the boundaries of fine art, light art or other visual disciplines in a wide variety of forms. At times these boundaries are even crossed—for instance in works incorporating new-media and interdisciplinary elements, photographs that appear within moving-image contexts, sound-accompanied pieces, or projects employing interactive media. Artists today have access to an ever- growing range of increasingly ingenious tools, offering ample scope for creative experimentation.
Many artists also follow the path of manipulated image- making. Every image that rejects a reality considered unacceptable for any reason, or that finds the artistic possibilities of conventional arrangements insufficient, readily challenges the boundary between reality and fiction, often crossing it and creating a quasi-reality shaped by individual vision. Unlike images generated by artificial intelligence, these processes still involve the artist’s direct presence: the eye, the hand and the tools all play a role in the making of the image, and the individual gestures and physical traces of intervention remain visible.
Finally there are the archivists, who resist the inevitability of technological change and reject automated forms of image production. They return to the nearly two-hundred- year history of photography, reconstructing earlier techniques and producing their works through laborious, complex and largely manual processes. The most compelling works are not those that simply replicate historical procedures by recreating themes familiar from centuries past, but those that address contemporary subjects and ideas while employing archival photographic methods. In such works the artist retains control over every stage of the process and never relinquishes it to machines or automated systems. In other words, historical techniques are combined with contemporary perspectives and artistic intuition in order to explore both personal and collective memory. Significant works may emerge when a concept, a reinterpreted location or an unconventional portrait is realised using techniques developed at various stages of photographic history, such as daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, salted paper prints, collodion ambrotypes or chromate colloid processes.
Although I have many reservations about images created partly or entirely with artificial intelligence, I nevertheless believe that a salon exhibition in 2026 that aims to highlight tendencies in photography cannot simply bury its head in the sand and ignore the rapidly spreading phenomenon of AI-generated images. Just as the director of a zoo cannot afford to have favourite and less-favoured animals, a curator must ultimately acknowledge every species within the field. I, therefore, conclude with the hope that, as it winds its way through its two-hundred-year history, photography may arrive at a crossroads from which new paths for human thought and creativity will open, enriching the already intricate network of routes.