07 Jun - 21 Jul 2012
The Empire Project is proud to present an exhibition of three contemporary Hungarian photographers in cooperation with the Nessim Gallery in Budapest.
The works of these three photographers show a special aspect of contemporary photography. All three are in search of something deeper, something that transcends the image and poses the eternal question, "How do we, who are here under this sky, regain & retain our humanity?
Gábor Kerekes (66) is one of the most remarkable photographers to emerge from Hungary in the last fifty years; the complexity and richness of his body of work continue to strongly influence younger generations. On the one hand, he works within the framework of a very strict concept, and on the other, he is obsessed with the quality of photographic development. His works are to be found in many private and public collections, from Riyadh to San Francisco and from Cadiz to Helsinki.
Attila Floszmann (30) is the youngest member of this generation of photographers. The series presented here was shot in Libya, just after the revolution. While Kerekes removes us from the present, Attila Floszmann offers us the present time as an aftermath, in which the traces of war emphasize its lack of humanity and evoke a common sorrow that we are able to share with the people who lived there. Yet there are no human figures depicted in this series; we can only share this emotion with the objects of the demolition. The series is a lyrical narrative about destruction without the brutality of its documentation, and thus Floszmann is able to concentrate on something of greater importance.
Ákos Czigány (40) is always looking for the light: the light of the spirit and the spirit of the light. In 2009 he began an intriguing series based on the digitalized version of the books of Charles Darwin. The original first editions of Darwin's books are to be found in several libraries around the world. The books were scanned and collected in an online archive by a foundation on the Internet, and it is this archive that Czigány chose as his starting point.
