Carly Steinbrunn, A Matter of Chance, 2025

A Matter of Chance explores the contemporary use of photography as a medium for recording in the service of scientific knowledge. In the age of screen culture, the book questions the dual nature of photography—as both evidence and construction—and examines the relationship between humans and their environment: their desire to control it, measure it, catalogue it and, ultimately, transform it into a commercial product.

Designed in the style of an atlas, the book brings together various photographic genres: views of buildings in technology hubs and data centres in Silicon Valley, images of scientific experiments taken in laboratories or studios, as well as a collection of scientific archives gathered online from government bodies, research agencies and educational institutions.

A Matter of Chance reveals the places where infrastructure and new communication networks are conceived and disseminated—these architectures, both visible and invisible, that shape our perception of the world. The book thus invites us to contemplate a hybrid territory, at the crossroads of the natural and the technological, where fascination, control and utopia intermingle.