“Living without relationships is like living without food” – Lilla Szász: Histories of Love (2009-2020)

"The relationships we engage in throughout our lives beginning with our Families provide a lot of raw materials for how our characters form. These are some of the most challenging interactions we will engage in and the source of some of our greatest gifts, happiness and likewise unhappiness and burdens. What and how we perceive is based on our experience and our experience comes from our relationships: beginning from our parents to our friends, loves and others. We cannot avoid them; living without relationships is like living without food.

I am fascinated by relationships. I take photos of friends, relatives, loves, people I know randomly. The goal, my goal has and had been to understand what love is. What ties people together. And after 9 years of photographing I realized that there is no one good answer. The answer is that I still don’t know. And I don’t think I will ever know.

The project is as scattered as loves and relationships are; no-one is similar, no-one is the same. Still, there are many similarities in between our loves.

The photos are part of my diary and the link is the many ways of feelings that tie us all together", wrote Lilla Szász about Histories of Love, a series presented at one of the most important exhibitions of 2020, and also published in a photo book. Histories of Love (2009–2020) is the first artist’s book in Lab4art’s planned giclée series; the photos were selected, and the book was edited, designed and bound by, graphic artist Zoltán Szmolka.