Adam Magyar (1972) finds innovative ways to use tech to observe life. That led him to capture the passing of time and freeze it into still photographs and videos. Using modified or self-built high-tech digital tools and cameras that “see” what the human eye can not see and the human nature rarely perceives, he has created mesmerizing representations of speeding subway trains and of flows of people on busy sidewalks.
Magyar depicts the synergies of man and the city, and embraces the city as home to both man and technology. With each of his series, he observes time flowing by and life pulsating in front of his eyes. In his works, he scrutinizes the transience of life and man’s inherent urge to leave some trace behind. Magyar is keen on adopting and reinventing contemporary devices like industrial machine-vision cameras to be able to produce his unique cityscapes.
Born and raised in Hungary and now based in Berlin, he travels the world extracting his images from the simple, ever-changing nature of daily urban life. “I am just an observer with a camera and a scanner”, he says.
His works have been exhibited in various solo and group shows internationally including Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Graduate School of Design Harvard University, Julie Saul Gallery and the Transformer Station in the USA, Helsinki Photography Biennial in Finland, ERES-Foundation and BSA exhibitions in Germany, Vasarely Foundation in France, the Ethnographic Museum Budapest and Faur Zsofi Gallery in Hungary, Rhubarb Rhubarb in the UK and SoSo Gallery in South Korea. His works are present in the collections of MFAH, Deutsche Bank, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Microsoft and the Bidwell Projects. His photographs have been published in the book In the Life of Cities by the Graduate School of Design Harvard University, Light and Lens by Robert Hirsch, and in magazines including Matter, PDN and PQ Magazine in the USA, Flash Art and Kreativ in Hungary, Foto Magazin in Germany, the Independent on Sunday and Digital Camera Magazine in UK, Katalog in Denmark and Blow Photo in Ireland.