THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)
In the 1970s Gábor Kerekes was one of the most prominent photographers in Hungary. His chief sources of inspiration were the absurd vision of the writer Kafka and the post-apocalyptic world (the ‘Zone’) from the film Stalker by the Russian director Tarkovsky. Kerekes documented the architecture of his country in a bleak, sinister style. According to him, these were images of the nightmare in which he lived. Despite its pessimistic slant, the documentary nature of his work made it difficult for would-be censors to ban it. Kerekes ceased photographing in 1982, tired of working on assignment. He destroyed almost all his photographs and donated the remainder to the Hungarian Museum for Photography. The fall of the communist regime in Hungary meant his rebirth as a photographer.
