CSABA BENEDEK

Like Father Like Water examines the reinterpretation of the father-son relationship through the invisible, deep layers of urban infrastructure. The project originates from a childhood mystery. Every morning before sunrise, my father disappeared into a hidden facility to operate both our family’s life and the city of Budapest itself. It is a place the entire city depends on, yet about which almost no one knows anything. What is this hidden system that sustains collective life?

 

The infrastructure spaces my father inhabited are loud, repetitive, and industrial. They are strongly masculine environments, sealed inside uniforms and routines. This form of labor provides stability and survival but often leaves little room for emotional presence. Does the constant hum of machines and the industrial world seal away the souls of those who work there, or do emotions still persist beneath the surface?

 

I realized this structure mirrored my relationship with my father: his work sustained our family but also created an emotional distance. I photographed floating textures, reflections, and unclear surfaces because they allow emotions to manifest without being illustrated directly. Water and waste function here as metaphorical spaces: layers that simultaneously refer to the metabolism of the city and the submerged relational dynamics within a family.

 

Like water flowing underground, many emotions in our relationship remained unseen, unspoken, and unresolved. Within these strange surfaces, I sought traces of suppressed feelings and the cause-and-effect relationships of accumulated relational burdens. The work reflects on the invisible systems that bind us together, the way individual lives diminish within vast structures, and the paradox of isolation and dependence.