Michaela Putz

“During her three-month residency in the Yangtze Delta in Shanghai—a place where ecological fragility and global production chains are inseparably intertwined—Putz began her engagement with the Baiji, a nearly forgotten river dolphin last sighted in 2006 and now considered extinct. In the photo series Unseen (2025), the animal serves as a starting point but remains absent from the images. Instead, Putz uses found digital image material gathered from private individuals and researchers’ archives. Clues to the animal have been digitally removed—the disappearance lingers subtly. What remains in digital archives, what is lost, and how does memory manifest in the image? Or is it erased altogether? Pixelated landscapes with color shades of the river—images filled with artifacts, disruptions, and overlays—come into view. Putz is drawn to the fragmentary, to what eludes clear visibility. At the same time, human intervention in natural systems becomes visible—the industrialization of the delta, its ecological strain, and the silent extinction of species. The series weaves loss, image logic, and ecological fragility into a quiet, critical resonance space.” – Livia Klein, 2025