“1980s Generation / snapshot-society” is a project initiated in 2012, in Budapest Hungary, as a multidisciplinary workshop of sociologists and artists, which then led to an exhibition at the PhotoMonth Budapest 2012 and to this website The focus is the diverse social phenomena and social problems that concern the 20 to 30 year-olds of today in CEE. This online platform was created to host artists’ works from different countries to reflect on the specific issues of this peculiar generation born in socialist times but grown up in democracies (i.e. in the 1980s).
In May 2012, in order to organize exhibitions to mark the occasion of PhotoMonth, Studio of Young Photographers Hungary initiated two workshops – one of them was entitled “1980s Generation”. A publication issued by Kontra Workshop in 2010 is considered the inspiration for the workshop “1980s Generation”: a group of young sociologists, psychologists, visual anthropologists published their studies on social phenomena and social problems that concern 20 to 30 year-olds – that is, they released self-reflexive interpretations on their own generation. Mostly these studies provided the theme for the members of Studio of Young Photographers workshopping with their individual projects.
The purpose of both the workshop and the exhibition was to inspire reflection on self and to provide a wide panorama on how the members of this generation see themselves – whether or not we consider ourselves different from those born earlier and those later; whether or not the mindset of our generation was influenced by the fact that we lived a part of our childhood in the Communist rule only to see, still as children, the regime change and a democracy starting?
A common experience of our generation is that while we have a system of values as well as models of family and work that were based on social patterns created during the Communist regime, these patterns won’t work when we’d apply them to life to start a career. They are out of date now.
It is the social issues of the 1980s Generations in the present time, on the one hand, that are raised by the self-reflective yet far-reaching art pieces displayed at the exhibition. On the other hand, the exhibition guides us back in the past, since some projects deal with events, scenes and social phenomena that are related to Hungary before the “regime change”, taking us back to memories and experiences of our childhood. The exhibition displays the creations of members of Studio of Young Photographers produced during nearly half a year’s workshopping.
Artists: Zsuzsa Bakonyi, Gergely Barcza, Zsuzsi Flohr, Emőke Kerekes, Katalin Illés, Márk Martinkó, Ildikó Péter, Kata Somogyvári, Réka Szent-Iványi, Katalin Vágó-Lévai – Csaba Vágó, Enikő Várai, István Virág.
Curator: Edit Barta, Assistant Curator: Anna Balázs
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