90 minutes
Márton Mónus
“Oltalom” (Auspices) Charity Society started to use sports as a therapeutic activity of personality developing value in its operations in 2005. “Oltalom” Sports Club tries to provide regular and free sports opportunities for the disadvantaged. During the trainings, in addition to the rules and techniques of football, participants acquire the skills necessary for cooperation and joint work which they can use in everyday life, at school and at work. Besides, players learn endurance and self-discipline during training and games.
I’d like to show what it’s like when someone plays heart and soul on the ground, looking for a way out, rather than pretending to be interested in playing for a lot of money. last but not least, they can forget for a while all the burdens, the pain that presses their hearts, and they can be kids again.
Márton Mónus (1990) is a freelance photojournalist in Budapest who photographs mainly for news agencies, including Reuters, dpa and MTI. In addition to his everyday, highly varied photojournalism work, he seeks topics with a wider range in his personal projects.
He often follows the subjects of his photo essays for many years. His series are mostly people-focused, trying to explore the problems of individuals or social groups with the tool of photography. His work has been rewarded with honored awards: shortlisted in the See.Me The Exposure Award competition in landscape category, and his image was exhibited at the Louvre in Paris. He has won several awards at the Hungarian Press Photo Competition, including the André Kertész Grand Prize, the Károly Escher Prize and the Zoltán Szalay Prize for three consecutive years for the best-performing photojournalist under 30. He has been participant in international masterclasses such as the Nikon-NOOR Academy Masterclass and is now a third-time scholarship holder to VII Academy seminars.
His latest photo essay on air pollution in Northeast Hungary was chosen by the Reuters news agency as one of the most important Wider Image story.
Swelter
There are certain areas in Hungary where inhabitants has serious difficulties heating their homes, mainly due to financial reasons. One such problematic spot is the Sajó Valley region. Residents burn any burnable material to warm their poorly insulated buildings. Because they can’t buy the right quality fuel, they burn wood, garbage, tires, clothes, waste paper, construction waste, PET bottles found in their inefficient heating utensils — in fact, anything that can add a little warmth. Unfortunately, the families not always acquire this fuel in a completely legal way, thieving wood from surrounding forests is not uncommon, searching for coal in pits dug into the ground, neither the theft of burnable materials from abandoned buildings.This kind of heating, apart from the fact of not providing enough heat, is extremely harmful to the environment as toxic substances (mainly sulfur), dust and ash are also generated and released into the air creating a serious health hazard in the area.