If I'm reading the code correctly, it is using java.lang.Object's hashCode method exclusively.
No. The object in question is an instance of the Photos class, so the hashCode method of Photos will be called. It doesn't matter what type of variable is referring to the object.
As for the original post, it's hard to say whether the code depends on special features of the class's hashCode implementation when the hashCode method was not posted. It may be that the value of hashCode is indeed a unique key for the object in this case.
(Edited to basically retract the entire post
Now that I look more carefully, I do see the implementation of hashCode there. (Amazing what a lack of whitespace does for readability.) So yes, the Object version of hashCode is being used. But as Srikanth says, it is a bad practice to assume that two different objects will have different hash codes, despite what certain implementations happen to do.
[ October 28, 2005: Message edited by: Paul Clapham ]