ZSÓFIA SIVÁK

I grew up in Kerecsend, in a small north-east village in Hungary, with a number of 2000 inhabitants. Many of the villagers live in deep poverty and around 40% of the inhabitants are Roma people. I had been living in Budapest when I first visited the Roma quarter of the village for the first time. The gap between them and the Hungarian villagers is wide, full of prejudices on each side so It took some time to break the ice and slowly I built a relationship with them. My attention was drawn to one particular family with five children, and as time went by I was able to look into their everyday life and slowly started to live through the days with them. After all the initial difficulties on the New Year’s night of 2015 they actually announced that I now had belonged to the family. Since then our relationship has never stopped, them and the Roma quarter of the village is part of my life as much as my Budapest life. My aim was not to create a series of documents of their life, it’s more like the visual outcome of my own experiences with them, in Dankó street. I’m interested in showing or creating an atmosphere which is though based on reality its main focus is on the characters very personal, intimate lives which sometimes can even come across as romanticised. When I am taking my pictures I also want to know how these people appear in the environment, so that means that for me the surrounding space and objects are just as important as the people.