WORKPLACES AND HABITATS: PARALLEL UNIVERSES
The sense of places
A large part of Ádám Urbán's documentary photographs provide insight into the daily lives of various professionals and professional collectives, exploring the social, functional, cultural, and emotional layers associated with their carriers. Rather than acting as a neutral observer, he conveys the unique character of institutional and workshop activities as an initiate sensitive to the internal dynamics of communities while working on a theme for long periods of time, often years. Alongside portraying the material environment of places, his main interest is in the role and situation of people
One of his most well-known works, dated from 2010 onwards, follows the daily life of the Capital Circus of Budapest troupe. His portraits of acrobats, clowns, and aerial performers simultaneously capture the contrasting challenges of people working with their bodies: daring courage as well as vulnerability or fragility. To continue with venues in the Budapest City Park, in 2013, Urbán created a visual diary of nearly anthropological depth on the built spaces and material equipment of the Amusement Park before it was closed. Images often feature decades-long employees, just like the maintenance workers and other staff appearing in his photos celebrating the 150-year-old Ice Rink (2020).
Ádám Urbán has been long interested in the special milieu created by fauna and flora in enclosed spaces; he has worked in numerous domestic and foreign zoos and botanical gardens. Learning about the manifold mission of the National Botanical Garden of Vácrátót, he was drawn to reporting on the responsible and intensive processes of scientific work. Thanks to the relationship he built with the Botanical Garden's management and staff, he photographed regularly in Vácrátót for a year starting in 2024. The resulting image series not only showcases the Garden's various units and the roles of those working there but also how the rhythm of the seasons shapes the constantly changing, living space of the arboretum. The Garden presents 13,000 plant species and varieties in a 200-year-old landscape garden, featuring varied terrain, a lake system, an artificial waterfall, spacious clearings and garden structures. The Botanical Garden is a nature conservation area and monument of national significance, a gene bank, an inexhaustible treasure trove for research and education, as well as a living museum. They have been maintaining four main collections: the Dendrology collection, the Taxonomy collection, the Perennial and Rock Garden collection, and the Greenhouse collection.
Inseparable interconnectedness
The interaction between water, plants, and light helps humans adapt to seasonal changes and attunes them to nature's rhythm. The word ecology derives from the Greek "oikos", originally meaning house, but also translated as household, where all inhabitants of the house live together. In his book Együttéléstan (Convivialism), András Lányi writes about this family circle: "The environment, conceived as a household, is not merely the place but the way of our dwelling: all that we do when we keep house and care for ourselves and ours." Ádám Urbán’s photographs convey that the botanical garden is not merely a static space but a living, breathing world requiring the continuous care and attention of those working there. In this approach, the photo series focuses the attention on the inseparable interdependence of plants, animals, and humans, while helping to realize insights arising from the power of care and maintenance.
Curator: Zsuzsanna Tulipán