Artist
Sára Kölcsey
Kölcsey Sára is a commercial and documentary photographer from Hungary, Pécs. She started her career at the age of 32, after she gave birth to her fourth child. She thrives on the opportunity to capture a story by framing complex scenes. She works on several long-term projects with subjects closely related to her own life events and experiences. As an artist and mother she captures the life of women, girls, and mothers. She strongly believes that they all deserve to be seen, and also to be heard.
The nature of the female body is also in her scope of interest: both what it stirs within and on the surface; its ability to create and grow life, its cyclical reminder that death is ever-present and, by the potency of 1st prize at the 42nd Hungarian Press Photo Competition: "Every day life" series category
Hush little baby, don’t say a word
I always wanted to be a mother. I was the type of a girl who believed in fairy tales. I became a wedding photographer—heralding the fairy tales of others.
When my first child was born, after a horrible birth experience the magic did not happen. There was a strange creature, his skin coloured lilac, my body full of stitches. I felt guilty and empty and I did not know the worst yet to come.
Collaborating with fellow mothers -some of them have experienced postpartum depression - we find little solace as society and media quickly turns the conversations to the aesthetics of our bodies post birth, with little room for the fear and doubts.These heavy burdens take their toll on mothers, only a few dare to admit their vulnerability. Nurturing a space to talk about this is essential, not only for women and mothers, but for the society as a whole. A healthy society needs healthy mothers, which is why they deserve more respect and appreciation. The only way to achieve this is to listen to their stories and work together to increase their social esteem.
Before every portrait session I had an interview, where they shared their thoughts about pregnancy, the health care system, the society and social media’s pressure of being a perfect mother. It is an on-going project starting in 2020.
Gajewszky Anna // Vékony Dorottya
Anna Gajewszky explores the mysteries of life through a series of sensitively made photographs. Alongside the paradox of life and death, she examines different layers of existence, clearly reflecting an honest and curious female perspective. In her work, she playfully incorporates experiences from both individual and collective lives, creating a universe that feels like an invitation to shared adventures. These adventures often begin with self-exploration—as in Anna's case—and continue with a deeper investigation of our roots, origins, and family. Through her own presence, the artist grants insight into the themes that captivate her while simultaneously becoming an organic part of them: in reality, her work is about us, even as we see her in the images. Her photographs combine the classical elements of staged photography with experimental techniques, including collage and archival materials, making her artistic approach even more dynamic and diverse.
Dorottya Vékony
visual artist, university lecturer (Institute of Media and Design, Eger), former FUTURES Talent
Hevesi-Szabó Lujza // Virágvölgyi István
Lujza Hevesi-Szabó is an exciting personality on the emerging photographers' scene of Hungary, who explores a wide range of current and relevant issues in her dynamic, experimental and fresh photo series, also in search of her own authentic voice. Her often bold and unconventional perspectives and visual conceptualisation usually result in an ironic, curved mirror viewpoint, but one can always sense that she uses these tools not for their own sake, but with a good sense of proportion, to elevate the situations faced by her subjects. Already at such a young age, she has found her place on the team of one of the country's leading news portals, but she is also building her private life's work, and is concerned with themes independent of the press. As an agent of two worlds, embracing both autonomous and applied photographic attitudes, she reflects experimentally on the social problems that surround her, an approach that is part of a long tradition of photography and promises a bright future for the author.
István Virágvölgyi
artistic director, Capa Center, Budapest
Lantos Olivér // Csizek Gabriella
The starting point of Olivér Lantos' long-lasting photo series are always questions that affect him personally and to which he responds with his own photographic tools. His researcher's attitude provides the basis for this, and he expresses his opinions and questions in the photographs that emerge from the process of observational image-making. His imagery is varied: nature and the urban environment, personal and public spaces, staged and found images, portraits, still lifes can all be interpreted as interacting parts of a flow of images, but they also carry meaning in their own right. He uses an associative method to construct his series, in which he interprets and organises, thus creating an open system.
Gabriella Csizek
curator of the permanent Robert Capa exhibition, Capa Center, Budapest
Kölcsey-Gyurkó Sára // Kopin Katalin
In the works of Sára Kölcsey-Gyurkó, the personal dimension is the most important. It was during her studies at university that she was introduced to feminist readings and viewpoints, which had a great influence on her. Besides her personal attachment, this also contributes to her focus on the themes of femininity, the female body and motherhood. She is a curious and sensitive observer of people and herself. The projects she works on are mainly related to her own life events: defining home, living with cancer. She likes to use metaphorical images in combination with documentary photography, giving her series an exciting rhythm. An important element in her work is that she is not an outside observer in the situations she photographs, but an active participant, shaping events and influencing the course of events. Her use of symbolic motifs is a departure from the classical documentary tradition, placing her on the border between conceptual imagery and documentary photography.
Katalin Kopin
curator, Capa Center, Budapest
Tóth Hunor // Mucsi Emese
Hunor Tóth, Hungarian artist from Bikafalva, Romania, was born in 2000, more than ten years after the 1989 revolution. His work is set in the village of Tăureni, the main location of his childhood and where he currently lives, and commute to Budapest. After the Romanian regime change, cities were transformed faster than rural settlements, the latter being more slowly affected by the processes of globalization, which is why in many cases folk, domestic traditions are still preserved there. Hunor Tóth's commuting lifestyle and intergenerational situation between two or three settlements create a kind of dual perspective in his photographs, allowing him to present the peculiarities of rural life in Romania in a loving, yet ironic, and self-reflexive way. Beyond the authentic, unique problem-solving strategies that emerge in relative isolation, and the Eastern European bricolage aesthetic of traditional buildings, spaces and objects, Hunor Tóth's work creates a contemporary image of a village that moves away from romantic stereotypes and offers insights into the new challenges of disintegrating communities, slowly changing rural landscapes, transformation of family life and uncertain futures. He graduated from Sapientia EMTE Cluj-Napoca with a BA in Film, Photography and Media and from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest with an MA in Photography, and his visual solutions, which subversively blend traditionalism with contemporary aesthetics, and the cinematic references of his photobook show the influence of these institutions on his oeuvre.
Emese Mucsi
curator, Capa Center, Budapest