Hungarian photographer Bence Bakonyi has been making a name for himself in the fine art photography world. In this ‘profolio’, Bence explains his thoughts behind some of his favorite works…
Dignity
I cannot escape from the fact that I struggle with myself. It has always been a difficult question for me: Do I know him? Who is he anyway? It's so alluring, sometimes as if the will of the body would want to swallow me, leaving my thoughts behind, but then comes the soul to pull me back. It's an eternal battle and a game. Like the gravitational pull of a black hole, when it touches you, something new is born, as if I'm not me anymore, somewhere else, in an unknown place.
Cognition
In this series, the viewer is put in the position of a distant, outside spectator. From the perspective of these photographs you can experience that kind of comprehension that is possible only through considerable withdrawal. Due to its viewpoint, this series represents the spirit of the group. It is not the person, but the community that appears as an individual entity: we see it moving in unity, the trace of its path, and the process through which it discovers the unknown. For the protagonists (the tourists) in these photographs taken in Dunhuang and Zhangye Danxia, the landscape was still just as alien and fascinating for them as it was for me when I documented it.
Urbanite
The Urbanite series is an account of how I found my home in the unknown. And because home is where you can find yourself, the photographs can also be seen as my self-portraits projected onto Hong Kong and Shanghai. The photographs are primarily documentative, but the use of light and colour – the portrayal of nighttime lights in bright daylight – nonetheless distances them from reality to a certain extent.
Discover more of Bence Bakonyi’s work on his website and Facebook page.