This project started as a personal return to my roots. Over the past seven years, it evolved into doctoral research as I traveled to Hungary’s smallest villages, places with fewer than 100 residents. What I encountered was far from the simple narratives of rural decline often seen in the media. Instead, I discovered a complex, living culture of resourcefulness and resilience.

FALU is a collection of these survival strategies. Through slow immersion—walking, talking, adapting my methods to what emerged—I began to see the village as a place of ‘unconscious sculptures.’ A window made from an old fridge shelf, a gate from industrial scrap, or a tool repaired for the fifth time are evidence of deep material knowledge. They show a community that constantly adapts its environment with creative precision.

The book makes this world tangible. It moves through the village like a puzzle, inviting readers to piece together the logic of rural life. The objects are treated with the same care as the portraits of their makers. In the sequence, a weathered hand and a weathered fence speak the same language. To add context while embracing ambiguity, I’ve woven in fragments of conversations, statistical data, and personal notes. These voices sit beside the images, creating a texture that reflects the complexity of the place.

In the context of ‘Ghosts of the Everyday,’ FALU captures communities that are fragile in physical terms but refuse to disappear. The improvised objects are traces of human ingenuity that persist even as the villages transform. What interests me is this ‘poetics of making-do’: the unintentional forms that emerge when people must build a life with limited resources. These aren’t relics of a foregone past. They’re evidence of a way of life that exists in a strange double state, vanishing in one sense, yet also stubbornly present in another. The book is an attempt to archive this paradox.

Winner of the Capa Grand Prize 2020 Fellowship

Exhibited in 2020 at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, Hungary.