Antal
Bánhegyesy

Cluj, Romania
1989

Antal Bánhegyesy started his career as nature photographer, before turning his attention toward portrait, fashion and nude photography, and later toward social and economic topics. Despite his young age, Bánhegyesy already won several international prizes (Second Prize at the National Geographic Photography Contest in 2007 and Third Prize at the CEWE International Photo Contest in Berlin, amongst many others).
In his politically and socially sensitive practice, Bánhegyesy usually chooses different present-day or historical issues as starting points, such as the refugee crisis or the dictatorial regime in communist Romania. For his series entitled Ceaușescu, he focused his research on how Romanian citizens relate to the communist era. Since more than half of the citizens he interviewed responded that they would vote Ceaușescu again, the young photographer became interested in the absurdity of such an answer and how people relate to such a period of terror and dictatorship in a positive way, while the population of neighbouring countries remember it as an age of terrible darkness.
The photographs of the Ceaușescu series were taken in the former home of the dictator, which operates as a museum today. It is in these symbolic spaces, where the scenography of power is carefully staged, that Bánhegyesy explored the traces of this broken past and its irrational relation with the reality in which Romanian people live today.