Barbi-pink miracles – About Tamás Hajdú’s photographs

The artist living in Baia Mare can be reached on his blog by those who are curious to see the absurd miracles of our lives, as the veterinary doctor regularly shares his photographs with his followers. The exhibition entitled Áthallások , which can be seen at the pulzArt festival, was opened by Dr. Julianna Bodó, a professor at the University of Sapientia of Miercurea-Ciuc, on friday afternoon at the Köntés Gallery. Julian Bodó became acquaintaned with Hajdú also in the virtual space, recognizing that these images were just the materials suitable for the cultural anthropologist’s habit. As Julianna Bodó puts it: “These photographs reveal the world we live in, although the photographer shows us in such an unrelevant way, that we would not even notice without his eyes.”

The buildings have faces, dog houses are grumbling bear-ish, the duck is swimming in the sea of blocks, the green Dacia is blooming in the bushes and the bunny is sitting in the bed of bottles. No, these are not children’s drawings, but the world seen from Tamás Hajdú’s eyes, namely the living area from Baia Mare.If we take a closer look at these story-framed photographs, carefuly composed and carrying a message, we can find something in common with a little child’s realistic drawings of a pig foreseen with wings, and this strange world that we see through Tamás Hajdú’s lens. Both of them are ruthlessly revealing the reality of things, while coloring the partial, charming distorted details in a way that makes us laugh. We are laughing at out own peccability and our hearts stop when realising that we love this fading world that he is showing to us, we feel it familiar, like home, and we would never move from here.

Instead, as Tamás Hajdú interprets us, in the common courtyard of the block we put graceful necked, blood-red beaked swan-artificial flower supports, created from white-painted tractor wheels, we polish our rickety, but close to our hearts, Dacia, we take care of our cattles grazing on the jungle of concrete, we cut our goodies on concrete, and provide our whole family for winter. „The artillery invades and retreats. We see sliding and rising at once “, says Julianna Bodó and also points out that the purpose in not an aesthetic of misery, but to understand and make the recipient compassionate. In this “endless temporary” disintegration is always withheld from the human endeavor to cover the traces of transition: put plaster, washing everything, put to dry and paint. Everyday moments are revealed by their own indiference, moments that Hajdu is transforming into vision and gives them meaning.

These created snapshots suggest to the viewer to ask questions about themselves, about their lives behind the walls. At the same time, they raise the veil to look behind things and see how within the simple act of laying sheets in Baia Mare, „the miracle is beating its Barbi-pink wings”.

Bartha Zonga