Untitled new project
Anna Gajewszky
Living close to nature and exploring a community based lifestyle has been a long desire in me. It is motivated by the anxiety and physical illnesses I have experienced in the past couple of years. It has also something to do with the distance from everything I took for granted as a child. I grew up in a community and in an environment where a connection to the land, animals, food or water was an integral part of life. I have experienced a close relationship with birth or death, both of which typically happened at home, in the company of women. I remember the natural rhythmicity that defined our days. To rise with the sun, to lie with the sun. Each time of day and season brought its own harvests, its instructions.
As newer and newer technologies are available to make our lives easier, the disengagement from nature and community is painting an increasingly frightening picture of the future. The majority of society is concentrated in big cities where individuals are isolated not only from nature but also from their immediate environment. The knowledge that our ancestors had (and that some communities still have) about the land, animals and the natural way of life is becoming more and more distant, lessening our trust in our own instincts and our experience of the natural course of life. With my series, I want to work towards exploring a way of life that is based around the natural cycle. Where community, connection and a rediscovery of ancient knowledge, that can help us develop a more natural rhythm of life, are important.
My aim is to find answers to the anxiety that surrounds our days, which I am increasingly experiencing in myself and in those around me. The final form of the project would be a photobook, with writings and possibly interview snippets. The design of the book is not definitive but I can imagine that it might include specific recipes or ideas. I also imagine that while creating the photographs I engage more with community making in the forms of workshops, and using our garden for a space to learn about nature. In my pervious works I have explored our relationship with animals, the land and our family members in the form of a single image, and in this series I want to expand on these processes and forge them into a coherent body of work.
Anna Gajewszky (1997, Budapest) is a photographer based in Budapest. She has recently graduated from the photography masterclass of Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design.
Her work is mainly characterized by its intimate exploration of personal issues, with a focus on the intricate quality of human relationships. She examines connections people form with each other, their families, their past, their own bodies, animals, and within a larger aspect the land.
The use of self portraits underline that her work is rooted in her personal life, however the images transcend personal narrative to engage with broader themes such as womanhood, family connections, generations, and countryside, rural customs, rituals. Her images are mostly staged but they often stay on the ground of reality creating a duality of fiction and truth that is central to her projects. This approach allows her to explore and communicate complex aspects of human experience.
Her work was exhibited both in Budapest and internationally, she was published in the 2021 edition of Blurring the Lines, she received the National Higher Education Excellence scholarship, her book was shown at Polycopies 2023, she was finalist at the Paris Photo Carte Blanche Students, she was an exhibitor at the 2024 Breda Photo Festival and was presented at UNSEEN Amsterdam, by Tobe Gallery in 2024 fall.
Mother Don’t You Cry
I find it important that we look back to our personal and historical past in order to have a better understanding of ourselves and our surroundings. Mother Don’t You Cry is a series of 20 images based on childhood memories and reflections on family stories that formed my identity and the person who I am today. The title of the project refers to a Hungarian folk song, in which a mother is crying because her daughter is leaving the family house as she is stepping into her new role in life as a wife and the daughter consoles her mother not to cry as this is the way of life.
My family comes from two villages in Romania (Transylvania) in which the attachments to traditions and rituals are very strong and they served as important elements in my upbringing. In my work I rely on these traditions, the life of women who surrounded me, my memories and archive images but I believe that my images go beyond them and beyond me. My aim is to create a visual world that speaks about womanhood, family connections, generations and different rural traditions.