Petőfi‘s Corpse by Tomoya Imamura
This series attempts to describe a Hungarian present whose post-socialist reality nourishes a new form of nationalism. A people who have been oppressed for centuries, whose culture and education has centered around the history of said oppression, is searching for a new enemy to blame in this new free, but unfair, world.
This image series combines documentary photography and staged images, though it remains unclear how much manipulation took place in each picture. Part of this staging are paper-mâché objects, which represent communist as well as Hungarian national symbolism. They serve as a white projection surface or burnt-out form. For outsiders, they are almost the only direct reference to Hungary, although the national symbolism depicted does not provide more information about Hungary than the occasional Hungarian-language lettering. The location thus remains in Eastern Europe and emphasizes the communist veil that poured the former Eastern bloc into uniform concrete.
The 1kg loaf of bread is a recurring element in the series. It is a standardized remnant of the socialist system, but also draws a parallel to the “Body of Christ“ and the religious aspects of the right-wing movement. Connected to the work‘s title it highlights Sándor Petőfi as a national “messiah“, whose death is just as unclear, as the evolution of Hungary‘s historical self image.
Tomoya Imamura lives and works in Essen, Germany.
To view more of Tomoya’s work, please visit his website.
