From the series What If… | Portrait #2
2026
AI-generated image archival pigment print (ChatGPT, Gemini)
45 × 63 cm
With this series, I attempt to examine myself in several possible parallel dimensions. I have often asked myself: what if… I had become a singer after all? What if I had gone to university in time and lived a life shaped by academic thinking? What if, I had not chosen photography over the questionable company of my youth and I had become a ne’er-do-well? What if I had simply not taken an interest in art and instead had chosen a more ordinary profession in the countryside, or tried to compensate for the lack of success and happiness with drugs? Using artificial intelligence, I searched for visual equivalents for these divergent life paths. The experiment led me to the following conclusion: an image generated by artificial intelligence is not a photograph but a digital drawing: an information-based pattern, a random cluster of pixels. There is no real subject, lens, exposure or perspective, and the essential ingredients of photography – the artist’s viewpoint, opinion and spirit – are missing.
photo: Tombor Zoltán
From the series What If… | Portrait #4
2026
AI-generated image archival pigment print (ChatGPT, Gemini)
45 × 63 cm
With this series, I attempt to examine myself in several possible parallel dimensions. I have often asked myself: what if… I had become a singer after all? What if I had gone to university in time and lived a life shaped by academic thinking? What if, I had not chosen photography over the questionable company of my youth and I had become a ne’er-do-well? What if I had simply not taken an interest in art and instead had chosen a more ordinary profession in the countryside, or tried to compensate for the lack of success and happiness with drugs? Using artificial intelligence, I searched for visual equivalents for these divergent life paths. The experiment led me to the following conclusion: an image generated by artificial intelligence is not a photograph but a digital drawing: an information-based pattern, a random cluster of pixels. There is no real subject, lens, exposure or perspective, and the essential ingredients of photography – the artist’s viewpoint, opinion and spirit – are missing.
photo: Tombor Zoltán
From the series What If… | Portrait #6
2026
AI-generated image archival pigment print (ChatGPT, Gemini)
45 × 63 cm
With this series, I attempt to examine myself in several possible parallel dimensions. I have often asked myself: what if… I had become a singer after all? What if I had gone to university in time and lived a life shaped by academic thinking? What if, I had not chosen photography over the questionable company of my youth and I had become a ne’er-do-well? What if I had simply not taken an interest in art and instead had chosen a more ordinary profession in the countryside, or tried to compensate for the lack of success and happiness with drugs? Using artificial intelligence, I searched for visual equivalents for these divergent life paths. The experiment led me to the following conclusion: an image generated by artificial intelligence is not a photograph but a digital drawing: an information-based pattern, a random cluster of pixels. There is no real subject, lens, exposure or perspective, and the essential ingredients of photography – the artist’s viewpoint, opinion and spirit – are missing.
photo: Tombor Zoltán
Zoltán Tombor
(1973, Budapest)
Zoltán Tombor started to learn about photography at the age of 13 and has been working professionally since 1995, having learned photography in an autodidactic fashion. Following successes in Hungary, he moved to Milan in 2003, and later settled in New York, where he built an international career. He returned to Hungary and has been living and working here since 2020. In addition to solo exhibitions, he has participated in numerous domestic and international group shows, including in Milan, Vietnam and Germany. His photos have appeared in Time, The New York Times, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His work is held in the collections of the Hungarian Museum of Photography, Harvard University and Equilor Fine Art, as well as in several private collections in Hungary and abroad. He has been a board member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 2024.