Dora Somosi is a Hungarian-American lens-based artist whose practice centres on the natural world and alternative photographic processes. Working with cyanotype, hand-coated paper and embroidery thread dyed with foraged plants, she combines digital photography with tactile processes and traditions of handwork. Somosi's process relies on prolonged time spent in nature, and she regards the finished works as physical traces of that immersion.
In her ongoing series By Her Side, Somosi photographs trees that stood near the homes or studios of twenty-five pioneering women artists and thinkers whose practices were rooted in America and whose work has influenced her own. Among them are Emily Dickinson, Georgia O'Keeffe and Toni Morrison. The trees serve as witnesses to these women's lives, enabling Somosi to create portraits by proxy and trace their legacies. The artists, writers, environmentalists and educators featured in the series shared a deep connection to the land and used their expertise or pioneering spirit to advance education and inquiry, as well as land conservation, preservation and appreciation. For Somosi, visiting the sites is a performative act that draws on photography's capacity to connect and memorialise: the women remain unseen, yet their connection to place endures.
Back in the studio, Somosi translates the photographs into large-scale, hand-printed cyanotypes, some reaching 60 × 40 inches on a single sheet. The resulting photographic blueprints become evidence of presence, proximity and time. A monograph dedicated to By Her Side was published in 2025. The ongoing project now extends beyond the United States to include women such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf.
Somosi's most recent body of work, Mending, extends this tactile approach through acts of transformation and repair. Responding to irregularities produced by chemistry, light and water, Somosi stitches into cyanotypes rather than discarding them. Drawing on the principles of kintsugi and Hungarian women's handwork traditions, she uses embroidery and threads dyed with plant matter foraged from the locations she photographs. Imperfections become openings for further creation, while the land becomes both the subject and the physical material of the work.
Before establishing her studio practice, Somosi spent a decade as Director of Photography at GQ/Condé Nast (2005 to 2014), commissioning and shaping editorial photography. She also worked at Magnum Photos. Recent solo exhibitions include Alchemy of Memory at Gilman Contemporary (2026) and Understory, in Blue at Sarah Shepard Gallery (2025). Her work has also been presented at AIPAD, The ADAA Art Show, and exhibited at the International Center of Photography, Katonah Museum of Art, Penumbra Foundation, Powerhouse Arts, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Bolinas Museum and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Samek Art Museum. Somosi lives and works in Brooklyn and Upstate New York.