BENCE FAZAKAS
BIO
Photographer.
His works typically consists of visually complex photo series, which usually process themes and questions from his environment. He expresses his works through the medium of analog photography, often experimenting / combining different techniques.
EDUCATION
2025-. Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca Film Studies MA 2017-2020. Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca Film, Photography and Media BA
AWARDS
2nd Place in Architecture/Gold Winner in Architecture/Other, Analog Sparks International Photography Awards Silver Winner - Tokyo Foto Awards (TIFA), Tokyo, 2025
EXHIBITIONS
Experimental Photo Festival (IPFA), Barcelona, 2025 FRESH MEAT - Budapest Photo Festival, Budapest, 2025 NOMA (new observations of momentary art) - Mediterranean summer, 2025 Analog Sparks - Best of Show Exhibition, House Of Lucie, Ostuni, 2025 Analog Sparks - Best of Show Exhibition, House Of Lucie, Athens, 2024 Analog Sparks - Best of Show Exhibition, House Of Lucie, Budapest, 2024 A fény képei - II. Fotóművészeti Szalon, Műcsarnok, Budapest, 2021 First Cut III - group exhibition, Univ. Sapientia, Cluj-Napoca, 2019 VIZUALIA photo festival - group exhibition, Cluj-Napoca, 2019 FOCUS photo festival - group exhibition, Cluj-Napoca, 2019
MEMBERSHIPS
2023- . Off Space (Odorhei)
SELECTION OF WORKS
DESOLATE MOOR (2024)
adj.: A desolate place, empty of people and lacking in comfort.
A subjective urban view, in which I recall my childhood cityscape of Cristuru Secuiesc, a small Transylvanian town, through the medium of photography. In this series I photographed special places and spaces that were mysterious back then to my childhood self. Upon revisiting my town as a young adult, a lot of memories and unanswered question came back to mind. These photographs serve as a memorial and documentation of a small industrial town, where communist brutalism that swept through is now slowly disappearing. I wanted to document these places before they disappear.
Technical details: 6x7 medium format film, shot with Mamiya RB67 on Kodak Gold 200, Portra 400, Fuji Pro 400h and Cinestill 800T.
STILL AIR (2018)
This photo series is a tribute to my grandfather. After he passed away, I felt an urge to do something, to capture his identity, to preserve his memory somehow. After a few days passed, I've visited his house. He lived there alone for decades, because his wife died in cancer early. I tried photographing his everyday objects, because I saw himself in those. The rusty radio which played static if not twisted the right way, his hat collection, but he always wore the same one, the bathroom tiles. It's all him.
OPERATION (2019)
This project was made with film, an enlarger and photographic paper. This series represents one of my biggest childhood fears: surgeries. As a child I've had problems with my toes, due to the fact that my nails wouldn't grow normally. As a result I've had 3 operations. Surgery quickly became a childhood trauma for me, causing the fear of needles, surgical knives and so on.
I photographed the man with a medium format camera, then took pictures of the objects using 35mm film. Having the pictures on film, I stacked them onto each other, put them into an enlarger, then exposed them on photographic paper.
The nails and the needle are Rayographs.
VILÁG A VILÁGBAN (2020)
World in the world
The Orbán Foundation in Odorheiu Secuiesc is a regional organisation dedicated to saving lives, advocating and building a better future for children in need or abandoned by their parents, and children with multiple disabilities. I have been a photographer for this foundation for about two years. I've always been fascinated by how honestly these people express themselves, how pure and uninhibited their souls are. One day, walking in the park with them, I asked Csabika what he wants to be when he grows up. His eyes lit up and he replied that he would like to be a fireman. That's when the idea of a photo series came to me, to make these children's dreams come true in some way. I asked as many of the young people as I could (because, unfortunately, few of them can speak) what they would like to do when they grow up. Others, I made up stories about them to see which craft would appeal to them.
My aim is to make these children (invisible to society) visible through my photo series, and to give insight into the spiritual world and emotions of these people. Despite the fact that these people are cumulatively disabled and that, unfortunately, they cannot be what they want to be, my intention was not to mock them with this photo project, but to fulfil their childhood dreams in some way. Perhaps in a parallel universe, Edó nurses the patients, Chabika fights fires and Csabika becomes the new Picasso.
FOUNDRY (2021)
The Steelworks from Székelykeresztúr was built in the late seventies and early eighties, and the actual production started in '82. Unfortunately, even at the beginning it did not use any modern technology. The factory was built on the basis of national ideas and plans, and was equipped almost exclusively with national machinery. The Steelworks had about 900 employees.
After the 1990s, the whole project management system gradually collapsed, and the company went through a difficult period until '93, when production almost stopped completely. Today, only a small part of the foundry is used. The photo series aims to show the impact of communism, where time stood still and the factory closed down overnight.
ANALOG
If photography comes to mind, I instantly think of film. Although digital photography replaced it, film made a comeback in the past few years. Many people born into the digital age started to recognize the beauty of film photography. When I got my first film camera, I feel like that was the point when I really started to understand what photography really is. It's the true form of photography... light, materials, chemical reactions, not some computer chip composing the picture of pixels for you.