Adam Urban
Hungary
Biography
Adam Urban worked as fashion, commercial and portrait photographer for agencies. Recently he shifted towards documentary and photojournalist series. Amongst other prestigious acknowledgements, he got awarded on Hungarian Press Photo Exhibition in multiple categories, presented his works in solo exhibitions, as well as in professional publications. He is Member Association of Hungarian Photographers and RANDOM and PICTORIAL COLLECTIVE.
Recently he became known by his documentary works of Capital Circus of Budapest and Aszod Juvenile Detention Center.
He was mesmerised by the world of circus since childhood and these ties got strengthened over time by the aspiration to show the life behind the scenes. The artists of the circus accepted him, embraced his work as an artist on his own right. Aerialists, trapezists, jugglers, stars of the stage lights let him to show that world, what is hidden from the spectators – which is the highest level of trust photographers can claim.
The high trust level is a constant patter in his career. In Aszód Juvenile Detention center he spent significant amount of time with the inmates, who are sentenced for theft, robbery or other guilty acts, and gained insights of their closed community, which rejects and expels any outsider with a deep, instinctive emotional reaction, coming from their guts. The results of this trust speaks for themselves on the photo series highly applauded by the photographers’ community.
Project
“Memory of Wildness” by Adam Urban is a photographic series by the Budapest-based artist whose work spans documentary, portraiture and social themes. While Urban’s broader practice includes a wide range of subject matter — from subcultures and event photography to environmental imagery and intimate portrayals of communities — Memory of Wildness appears to engage with the idea of nature and its residual presence within both landscape and human experience, evoking moments where the traces of untamed environments intersect with personal or collective memory.
The work invites viewers to reflect on how wildness — whether ecological, emotional or psychological — persists in the world and in our inner landscapes, and how photographic image-making can capture the tension between human imprint and the vanishing traces of the untamed.
