Lenke Szilágyi: Post-Soviet 1990–2002

Photographer Lenke Szilágyi regularly visited the former Soviet Union from the 1990s. The photographs she took captured the fall of communism and the new, post-Soviet reality not only in such prominent centres as Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but also in non-metropolitan areas, as by the Black Sea, in the Volga Region, and Karelia. Her pictures are sensitive impressions of a time marked by constant change, and a place characterized by permanent motionlessness.

People in Russia, said Lenke Szilágyi in an interview, still consider being photographed as a friendly gesture. The characters in her shots do indeed seem untroubled by the presence of the photographer, and many of them look into the lens with a friendly expression.

Post-Soviet – Lenke Szilágyi’s photographs 1990–2002, the exhibition that opened at Galeria Centralis in July 2020, was the first major selection from the Russian photos, and was voted by experts on Punkt.hu among the most important exhibitions of 2020.

As exhibition curator Katalin Székely put it, the scenes we now present in this gallery reveal the characteristics of the post-Soviet era, and throw into relief the equally comic and tragic nature of an everyday reality through the polished interplay of composition, light and setting.