Gaspar Risko

Risko © Gaspar Risko

Gaspar Risko: Impasse

Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of forty years of communism, and ten years since Hungary joined the European Union. While the wealth of the upper class was methodically nationalised during socialism, soon after the fall of the iron curtain, thousands of people have lost their jobs due to the privatisation and selling-off of various factories, mines and agricultural associations. Employment offered by world-famous, age-old Hungarian factories and companies were cut. The historic turning points of political forms have brought significant changes, but despite previous hopes, we were unable to gain the economy level that was imagined. Though living standards increased in some ways the difference of income between the upper and lower classes has grown exponentially. Over the years, certain sections of the society, have reached a financial deadlock, which is difficult to dislodgement. While meandering on the border of reality and fantasy, today, the majority of the population awaits the arrival of better living conditions in a perplexed state of contradiction. The images of empty factory buildings and lands left to waste all cite the memories of the not so distant past. They remind the observer that emptiness and dysfunctional rule some regions which have fallen into state of isolation and constraint.

View Visual Dialog: Impasse

Biography

I was born in 1978 in Budapest. I began my studies on film production and photography in the School of Visual Arts in Sydney in the year of 2000. Since I moved back to Hungary I have been working as a photographer. Besides taking images for magazines and newspapers I work on several long-term projects. I explore the relationship between humanity, nature, environment, mind and spirit.

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