Arion photography

The home and the tree are both key symbols of the inner and outer world, of the personal space and nature. This work started out from a very simple idea of repetitious documentation of identical objects of both groups, but slowly became an investigation of identity, originality and authenticity.
There are two pine tree shaped relay stations near Budapest of identical design. I photographed them from different viewpoints, during different seasons and at different hours. In this series some of these fake trees are more than identical, they are in fact the same object.
Kitchens in socialist housing estates were prefabricated including the furniture. They even shared the view outside the window to a great extend. Thanks to the economy of scarcity also the kitchen utensils were similar for a long time. I took pictures of several of these kitchens from the same vantage point revisiting some of the locations after one or two years. A comparison of the images shows how the original design was customized by their respective owners and how change over time becomes visible within a person's life.

I search for objects that are monsters by their nature. The tree camouflage steel towers are supposed to blend into the environment. But mammoth pines do not exist in Hungary. While a metal antenna sticking up into the sky would go unnoticed, these pines became conspicuous landmarks completely getting out of line. In a similar manner plattenbau - so typical for the Eastern block - is an attempt to erase the identity of its inhabitants. These living spaces were designed to match the needs of the average person and in socialist times 'average' was often mistaken for the 'minimum'. As if people do not need to form their environment according their own needs, these environments try to form people to fulfill their once doctrinaire standards.
Prefabrication and mass production are one way communication channels of values like television or bottle messages. As standardized elements are gradually deconstructed by individual interventions, the flow of communication is reversed providing valuable feedback into the system.
The Time Capsule project is in progress forever.

Kitchen (Tamás), Budapest / Konyha (Tamás), Budapest 2007