| The 'Saját
szemmel/Inside Out' project, made in collaboration with Miklos Erhardt,
began in July 1997. Between then and February 1998, around 40 homeless people
living in Budapest were given simple colour disposable cameras and invited
to take photographs of whatever they felt to be important or interesting
in their everyday experience, in the knowledge that their pictures would
later be viewed publicly as part of an exhibition and web site. The participants
were approached on a fairly random basis in the city's metro stations and
homeless shelters. When the prints were ready we recorded an interview with
each photographer about their pictures. Through the support of our sponsors
we were able to recompense the participants for their work. Picture selection was made on the basis of each photographer's personal preference with the exception of a few photos which were regarded by us as being important. Each photograph is credited to and commented on by the person to whom the camera was given even though in many instances that person chose to be the subject of the picture. Some pictures appear without an accompanying text as in a few cases, once the photos were printed, we were unable to find the photographer to record their comments. We didn't modify the language used in the interviews to conform to a grammatically correct standard and where possible tried to translate peculiarities into the English texts. The work was presented in two exhibitions. One was in the the established art context of the Budapest Galéria, (Budapest III., Lajos utca 158.) Around 100 colour photographic enlargements (3 to 4 pictures by each participant) were exhibited along with their corresponding comments. The exhibition was opened on 19 March 1998 by Sándor Kardos , filmmaker and curator of the Horus photographic archive, and ran until 19 April. A 20 page black and white catalogue including at least one photograph and text by each participant was available during the exhibition. All participants and social workers were invited (about half attended) to this opening as well as the usual gallery mail out circle. Although it was our status as artists that got the show in the gallery in the first place, we tried to deflect attention away from us so that on the posters and invitations, the main focus of attention was on the photographers names and when radio and television stations sent reporters to the opening, we duly passed them on to speak to the creators of the work. To have homeless people as the artists on show, proud and actively responding to the reporters questions created quite an unusual and provokative situation in what is usually quite a guarded elitist and apolitical art scene. The show was a big success, gaining a lot of media attention, pulling in more crowds than normally come to the gallery in a year and was subsequently extended to allow more people to see it. The other exhibition was held two weeks later from 2 - 5 April in the main hall of the FSZKI Dózsa György út homeless shelter, the largest homeless hostel in Budapest. Whilst there were issues relevant to art in Hungary that made it important to show the work in the context of an art gallery, we felt it was equally if not more important that the work be shown in a homeless context so that it could easily be seen and reflected upon by more people in a similar position of homelessness and so that visitors from outside the hostel would have to step in to this unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable context to see it. The content differed in that the full interview transcripts and ten smaller sized pictures by each participant were exhibited. The opening was more of a screening and discussion event in which two TV programmes about the project were screened. One was an arts programme which featured an art theorist critiquing the work and the other was a half hour documentary, made in collaboration with Sándor Kardos, for 'Háló', MTV1's social documentary series. It features many of the project's participants discussing both their own and others photographs and a short film directed by one of the photographers, László Hudák. A lot of the participants attended and contributed towards a lively discussion with us, each other, residents from the hostel, social workers and people from outside about the project and homelessness in general. In the effort to take the work to a broader public, 1000 editions of a collection of 20 postcards featuring the work of 20 photographers were made and given to Hungarian homeless foundations to be sold. This web site was also made to document the full interview texts and ten photographs from each participant. A presentation and discussion event was held at C3, the Centre for Communication and Culture, to mark the completion and opening of the site. The exhibition has subsequently been invited to show in a number of cities across Europe. In 1999, it was part of the 'Kunst der neunziger Jahre in Ungarn' (Hungarian Art from the Nineties) exhibition at the Akademie der Künstler in Berlin and was shown in Aarhus, Denmark at IMAGE photographic gallery. It was part of the 'After the Wall: Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe' exhibition which opened at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1999 and later toured to Budapest and Berlin in 2000. It was included in 'Cooperativ', in Ulm, Germany at Stadthaus Ulm in July 2000. After the completion of the photographic project in 1998, Miklós continued to work with one of the photographic project's participants, László Hudák and his circle of friends, the 'Tequila Gang' on the making of a film. The one hour long film, part fiction and part documentary, was directed and filmed on video and super 8 by and László and social worker, Lénárt Imre, and produced by the Balázs Béla Studio, Budapest. 'Tequila Gang' was premiered in the competition section of the 30th Hunagrian Film Festival in 1999. It has since been screened at various European film festivals (Split, Sienna, Oberhausen) as well as being shown alongside any subsequent exhibitions of the 'Saját Szemmel/Inside Out' project. Funding for the project enabled László and the 'Tequila Gang' to move out of their homeless shelter and rent a flat together for a period. Exhibitions: Saját szemmel / Inside Out, Budapest Galéria Exhibition House, 19 Mar-19 Apr, 1998 (catalogue). Together Again?, IMAGE photographic gallery, Aarhus, Denmark, 13 Aug - 21 Sep, 1999 (catalogue). After the Wall: Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe, Moderna Museum, Stockholm, Sweden. 16 Oct-16 Jan, 1999 (catalogue). Cooperativ - Kunstdialoge Ost-West, Stadthaus Ulm, Ulm, Germany, 3 Jul - 10 Sep (catalogue). More information at: www.bighope.hu/insideout |