28/05/2026
Szilveszter Makó grew up in Miskolc, Hungary, close to forests, craft traditions, and a school that taught Ancient Greek and Latin. He started as a painter but found it too slow. Photography gave him the speed he needed without taking away the control he wanted.
He is based in Milan now. His studio runs on natural light exclusively. Flash is banned. Every prop and set piece is built by hand from recycled materials; cardboard painted to look like marble, paper moons, handmade frames. When the clouds shift outside the window, the whole shoot changes with it. He does not fight that. He accepts it as part of the process.
His visual language pulls from centuries of art history all at once. Early work channels Renaissance painting: elongated silhouettes, dramatic chiaroscuro, women holding swords like Roman generals reborn. More recently he has moved toward the earliest days of photography itself. Muted palettes and faded tonalities that feel like portraits from a 1920s county fair. The influence of Surrealism runs through all of it, alongside Baroque theatrical lighting, the geometric rigour of Bauhaus, and the dreamlike clarity of René Magritte. His signature motif is the box: a geometric frame that appears across almost every body of work, confining the subject to amplify them. He has described it as both a restriction and a liberation.
He has photographed Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Bad Bunny, Elle Fanning and Michelle Yeoh. He treats none of them differently from anyone else. His work has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Acne Paper and The Cut. He has shot campaigns for Schiaparelli, Maison Margiela, Prada, Bottega Veneta, Loewe, Zara and Adidas. In a world of identical campaign imagery, a Makó photograph is immediately recognisable. There is nobody else doing what he is doing right now.
