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Claudia Fuggetti’s Metamorphosis remains on view at the Mai Manó House – PaperLab Gallery until January 2026. Throughout the year, we will welcome visitors with seven new and exciting exhibitions that showcase the versatility and depth of contemporary photography. Each exhibition offers distinct perspectives, narratives, and artistic approaches, enriching visitors in different ways. All shows are free, making the diverse world of contemporary photography accessible to everyone at the PaperLab Gallery.
The 2026 season opens with Tamás Hajdu’s exhibition All Quiet Still in the East, on view from late January to March. Hajdu’s photographs are striking imprints of contemporary Eastern European visual culture. His work blends the traditions of documentary photography with a sensitivity to the absurd, while remaining deeply grounded in the aesthetic and social legacies of the post-socialist region.
In early spring, we present The Wall Remembers Twice by Italian photographer Benedetta Ristori. The series examines the layered memories of the Central and Eastern European region, focusing specifically on Georgia and Armenia. Working with analogue techniques, Ristori portrays the Soviet past not as a museum relic but as a living fabric embedded in everyday spaces. She photographs cities, swimming pools, housing estates, and playgrounds where traces of history still run through the cracks in the walls. The series is both documentary and poetic: “The aim of the project is to uncover the relationship between the past and the present of these nations, and to show how the past can shape the world today,” says the artist.
From May onward, Ukrzaliznytsia by Ukrainian photographer Julie Poly will be on view–a series created between 2017 and 2019 that explores the unique world of the Ukrainian State Railways. The photographs are both documentary and stylized, with Poly describing her approach as “pseudo-documentary.” She stages scenes inspired by real passengers and real locations. When the series—and the accompanying book of the same title—was first shown, it cast new light on how social classes, public infrastructure, and intimate moments converge within the confined space of a single train carriage. Her images sensitively reveal the parallels between official systems and the informal life that unfolds beneath them. “I believe that traveling by train in Ukraine is quite a piquant experience. There’s no other place in the world where so many half-naked people rattle along together,” says the artist.
Summer begins with IUZZA by Francesca Todde. This poetic and mystical photographic project is inspired by the novels, poems, short stories, letters and personal notes of the remarkable Sicilian writer Goliarda Sapienza. Complementing the few surviving archival portraits, Todde creates new images at the places where Sapienza lived and moved, evoking the writer’s universe. Her photographs translate words into images, narrating an intimate journey through Sicilian landscapes, volcanic stones of Mount Etna, baroque palaces, and mythological figures. In these works, the layers of reality and memory merge, as the boundaries between body, landscape, and time dissolve. The acclaimed photobook, named after Sapienza’s childhood nickname, was published in 2024 by Départ pour l’image.
At the end of August, we host an exhibition featuring photographer Attila Agárdi, who has dedicated nearly fifteen years working with daguerreotypes—one of the most complex and technically demanding processes associated with the birth of photography. Introduced publicly in Paris in 1839, the technique reached Hungary only a few months later. Mastering the daguerreotype requires years of perseverance, technical knowledge, and a significant financial investment; today, only a few dozen artists worldwide are able to work with it professionally. Agárdi, akin to a contemporary alchemist, returns to the origins of photography to reveal both the material and spiritual dimensions of image-making. His works are not only about the nostalgic act of fixing light, but also emphasize the enduring value of attention and craftsmanship.
The fall season begins with Algues Maudites / Cursed Algae by French photographer Alice Pallot. Through the phenomenon of green algal blooms along the Breton coast, Pallot investigates the fragile ecosystems of the Anthropocene. Working in collaboration with scientists and ecologists, she explores how nutrient surpluses from pollution create oxygen-deprived “dead zones” along the shoreline. Her images lead viewers into a world where beauty and decay are inseparably intertwined. By combining scientific tools—such as microscopy, sampling, and laboratory cultivation—with the narrative possibilities of photography, Pallot reveals the hidden mechanisms of pollution. Her photographs both document and foreshadow a future in which environmental changes fundamentally influence the conditions of human life.
The year 2026 at PaperLab Gallery concludes with a comprehensive, multi-year project by French photographer Mathias Depardon, which explores the social and geographical borderlands of present-day Turkey. Through portraits and landscapes, the series titled Transanatolia examines a country that strives for modernization while preserving the shadows of its Ottoman heritage. Depardon leads us to the fringes of ‘Greater Turkey,’ where the fault lines of history and the transformations of the present emerge with striking clarity.
