Earplugs on Wall-to-Wall Carpet

My current hotel, built in Czech log cabin style, is situated directly on the E75. There’s something cozy to it. Right out back is the ski slope. The trucks roar past the hotel in a thoroughly delightful way. I’m given a rear-facing room, looking towards the slope. The slope throws the road noise back at me. So the trucks also roar in my room in a thoroughly delightful way. There are earplugs on the nightstand, though. That strikes me as service-oriented. A real E75 hotel! I’ll stay here a second night.

The previous blog entry is hereby confirmed: I’m spending tonight in a ski area, with a surface lift just out the back door. It faces the E75. But the only snow I’ve seen on this trip so far was back in Greece—on Crete and atop Mount Olympus….

Tatra skiing … off-season

At some point yesterday, I crossed a horizon of some sort.  I’m not sure what horizon, exactly, but I feel it. I’m suddenly in the North. And then I tell myself, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, you have no idea what ‘North’ really is.” But I do sense a shift.

Whether it’s a different quality to the air, a different light, a change in the landscape, a certain vibe, or an overlapping of all these things. I don’t know. I’ve left the Balkans, of course. Exactly where is something I’m also not sure about. Does Bratislava still qualify as “Balkans?”

The E75 is beginning to reveal a new Continue reading →

Naturally, the E75 project does have a couple of conceptual cornerstones. They’re as simple as can be. To put them in a nutshell: I want to know more about the Europastrasse as such, so I’ll follow one of these roads from beginning to end, averaging a bit less than 100 km a day. That’s it.

In motion on the Europastrasse

Such a simple approach gives rise to complex interconnections. Being constantly in motion has a certain effect on me. You see something. And while you’re reflecting on it, you’re already somewhere else. Obvious example: when I eat olives here in Hungary that I bought in Greece, with dinars in my wallet instead of forint while I’m already trying to remember whether or not Slovakia uses the Euro, I notice that I’m relentlessly in motion.

How often I’d like to switch into tourist-mode, stay a bit longer somewhere, be tickled by a muse (the Muses, after all, are at home in Greece)—but I Continue reading →

I get out of the car at a Hungarian highway rest stop. Before having completely taken my first step, I count 11 security cameras. What’s more, several cameras monitor each and every onramp here. And then there are those at the toll booths. You simply indicate your license plate at the border, and as you drive, a pattern recognition algorithm compares it constantly with a central database to see which drivers have paid and which haven’t.

So in this country, they’ve taken more pictures of me than I have of them! I find that pretty impressive.

Paprika sprinkled onto my breakfast egg. The Europastrasse’s straight as an arrow. Everything’s very neat. Except for my shirt: it’s spattered with goulash. I’ve arrived in Hungary.

Motels. The epitome of modernity. Everything revolves around cars. You’re in the present, thoroughly contemporary. You come in from the day’s travels, shaking or showering the exhaustion off of your body in your rented room. Your one-night center of the universe—after which you’re somewhere else again.

Motels are multifunctional things. They’re made to revolve around the car. The word motel itself is a portmanteau of “motor” and “hotel.” The motor comes first. The hotel only second. There’s also the restaurant—with its constant view of the parking lot, looking out towards

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My point in taking this trip up the E75, as in my work in general, is to reflect upon us as a society. After all, a picture says more than 1,000 words—which is what moved me to become a photographer in the first place. But what does one actually intend to do with his or her photography as such? Every one of us who presses the shutter release faces this question the moment we present a picture in public for the first time. And the camera function on a mobile phone asks us the same thing—after all, Facebook is public. As is the bulletin board in the kitchen or at the office.

You don’t need to provide an explicit answer to the question of “What do I intend with my photography as such?” But you do answer it implicitly with your first post on the Internet, on your bulletin board, or with your first exhibition. So do I want to show that I’ve mastered my camera, that I’m a great photographer? Do I want to show all the things I’m constantly experiencing? Or do I want to show…?

The list of possible approaches goes on forever, and one’s personal answer will include the overlapping of several such possibilities. I, too, answered the question implicitly with my first publications, and I only gradually began to consciously realize just what my approach is. It eventually became clear to me that I have a very good talent for observation. And I’d like to use it to look at us as a society and share my observations with you.

From the Series WE – dramaturgy of social life

What are the people doing here, on this picture of the pier?
This scene isn’t staged. Strange it may seem, Continue reading →