The Badacsony photo and video series is based on the three pillars of observation, understanding and construction. The aim is to draw on research to show something new about the cultural landscape that I have been observing and photographing for decades through visual and audio representation, and thus to offer a more sensual and deeply interpreted image of Lake Balaton for interpretation, using the tools of contemporary art, instead of fixed stereotypes.
The concept – the essential element of which is repetition – is not only an attempt to summarise ideas, but also a formal summary. My photographs, consciously centred on repetition, explored man’s personal cosmic presence. Repetition for me is a creative language that seeks to follow the rhythm of understanding and reception. One of the main inspirations for this series is my relationship with the use of time.
The creative process began in 2015 and has continued since, capturing the timelessness of the landscape, aiming to store the enduring yet never self-repeating versions of the landscape. The technical process of capturing images has also changed since the beginning, and I now take advantage of the media possibilities of the time to use the remote-viewing capabilities of webcams.
I constantly share the captured moments of Badacsony on social media platforms and this has become an inspiring force for others. And this is how the composer Ádám Jávorka, who reacts to moving images, became my partner. The sound responses to his images gave me the idea for a new film, where the selected and stitched together sequences of images are completed with a musical soundtrack composed by Ádám Jávorka.
Ábel Szalontai