Zsolt Bátori is a philosopher of art, a photography theorist, a practicing fine art photographer, and a curator.
His work bridges philosophical inquiry, image-making, and contemporary debates on AI-generated visual culture. After earning his PhD in Philosophy from Rutgers University, he has taught and conducted research at universities in Hungary, the USA, Spain, and Argentina. His primary area of research is the philosophy of art and aesthetics, with a particular focus on the philosophy and theory of the visual arts and photography. He is especially interested in questions concerning engagement with artworks, photographic meaning construction and interpretation, and how generative AI reframes questions of authorship, creativity, deception, trust, and responsibility. His recent article in Synthese addresses creativity and authorship in AI-generated photo-based images. As a photographer, he has exhibited his work internationally, focusing on projects about visual memories, landscape and social change, and the abstraction of ordinary scenes – through both photographic means and generative AI – into distinctively novel perceptual and cognitive experiences. His research and artistic practice develop together: theoretical questions are pursued through image-making, and artistic experimentation becomes a method of inquiry.
Zsolt is a researcher at the Faculty of Music and Visual Arts at the University of Pécs and a member of philosophy and aesthetics research groups at the University of Murcia and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He also teaches at EINA, School of Art and Design (Autonomous University of Barcelona) as an adjunct instructor. His teaching connects conceptual rigor with practice-led inquiry into photographic and computational image-making. He received the APRA Foundation Berlin Multi-Disciplinary Fellowship for Visual Memories, a multidisciplinary project integrating philosophy and photography.
He was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to further develop his research at Harvard University on AI-generated visual and multimedia content, integrating philosophical analysis with an interdisciplinary creative arts project. He will be physically based at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from January through May 2027, while his one-year affiliation with BKC begins in September 2026.
Zsolt is the founder, director, and curator of PH21 Gallery. For more than a decade, PH21 Gallery has organized group and solo exhibitions for international photographers – originally in Budapest and in collaboration with galleries in Barcelona, Jersey City, and Rome. In 2025, the gallery relocated to Barcelona. Since 2023, Zsolt has served as a juror for Photolucida Critical Mass, and in 2026 he was invited to join Photolucida’s Board of Directors.Research and creative interests: Philosophy of art and aesthetics Philosophy and theory of photography Philosophy of AI, including ontology, authorship, creativity, deception, trust, responsibility Fine art photography, photo-based AI (creative praxis) Curating and photography criticism Visual communication and the visual arts; visual literacy