Artist
Noémi Napsugár Melegh
Noémi Napsugár Melegh was born in 1990 in Budapest, Hungary, and is currently a full-time photojournalist for telex.hu, one of the largest independent news portals in Hungary. Although she has been interested in photography since she was in high school, she worked as a health economist for several years after having obtained her BA and MSc in Economics. During the past two years, she has participated in several international training courses: she was a fellow of the VII Academy Level 1 and Level 2 Documentary Photography Seminar, a participant of the Magnum workshop organised by the Robert Capa Center in Budapest, and a fellow of the Canon Student Development programme and of the prestigious Eddie Adams workshop in Jeffersonville, New York. Her true passion lies in creating long-form documentary projects that focus on personal stories and presenting the lives of local, marginalised communities. In 2023, she won 2nd place in the Documentary Photography (Series) category of the Hungarian Press Photo Contest with her work titled as "Gábor and Kálmán", which tells the story of two men living on the margins of the Roma community. In the same year, she was awarded the Hemző-Károly Prize, a prestigious yearly award for a photographer under 35.
Village youth in Hungary
The aim of my project is to present the lives of Roma youngsters living in the Hungarian countryside, looking for an answer to what external and internal influences form their personality and self-image. Family ties and relations play an extremely important part in Roma communities, thus observing them are essential in understanding the values and traditions that are still strongly present in their culture to this day, and which also fundamentally define their identity.
Some of the problems faced by Roma communities across Europe are reflected in young Roma’s transition to adulthood, namely poverty, exclusion and lack of opportunities within and outside their community. Although today there are a large number of important initiatives that promote Roma inclusion, (in terms of education, reproductive health, employment opportunities and so on), it is essential that this is done in light of the environmental influences, their social habits, beliefs and unique traditions.
My series is based on personal motivation too, as I have been interested in Roma culture for a long time. In the past few years I have formed a close relationship with a small community in Nógrád County, and and such I have had the opportunity to be present at important family events such as births, weddings, birthdays, village fairs, funerals.
In her long-term works, Zsuzsa Darab explores personal themes often combining conceptual and experimental solutions. Deeply engaged with the subject of observation, she presents her questions and experience as a visual story. Often, she takes her own life as a starting point in dealing with the ‘first-life panic’ of her generation and the psychological processes of coming to terms with lived experience.
Balázs Fromm’s projects unfold against the backdrop of Middle and Eastern European countries where democracies are under pressure from the threat of impending war, rising nationalism and migration. He demonstrates an interest in the human condition, which is revealed through a mix of tender portraits and impressions of direct surroundings, resulting in a palette of atmospheric images expressing the challenges of a region faced with an uncertain future.
As an active photojournalist, Noémi Napsugár Melegh is able to step away from the ‘fly on the wall’ role of an impartial author we most often expect from press photography. The atmosphere of trust that she is able to create is palpable in her images, and although she is at the beginning of her photographic career, her images show a freshness of creativity that has the potential to be seeking new experimental paths.
The exceptional characteristics of Róbert Nunkovics’ work were evident from the very beginning of his praxis: he uses the tools of documentary photography to present topics related to his interest in authentic artistic expressions, typically outsider or vernacular and rooted in street art, graffiti culture and everyday life. The focus of his sensitive multimedia projects is usually a remarkable figure or a special place with a little-known story.
Boglárka Zellei combines the spiritual journey with the creative process and her artistic practice is guided by the experience and projection of spiritual processes. With her photographic-based installation works, she invites the viewer into an intense dialogue, drawing attention to fundamental questions of faith, while also bringing to the surface themes of spiritual resilience, as well as notions of judgement and acceptance.