“THERE’S NO THROUGH TRAIL” —HAN-SHAN, TRANSLATED BY GARY SNYDER

Basic Human Rights

by Bela Varadi

Issue: Spring/Summer 2021

Artist’s Statement

I am not trying to create a separate world or deconstruct what is happening on the world. Rather, I just highlight and frame important moments.

As a young man, I studied painting but after a while I could no longer express myself within the framework of painting, so later I became a television journalists. Wider frameworks, more dimensions and a completely different imaging technique – this is what digital journalism has brought with it. The audio-video interpretation of the facts taught me to reduce the information, to filter out the important things, and leave the frills.

As a photographer, this is driven by visual thinking. To leave the excess, to reduce the important things or the emotion into a single image, perhaps a series. Maybe that’s why a little work gets out of my hands. I don’t like the excess, and I don’t like aimless imaging.

About Bela Varadi

Bela Varadi grew up in a Roma family in a declining small industrial town in East-Hungary. His creative enlightenment started with painting. Soon he got the opportunity to participate in journalism courses in the capital. He worked as a journalist for 12 years: he started as a radio news reporter in a Roma radio, RadioC. Later he worked in national broadcasters as a news reporter/editor. During that time, he made a documentary series in his free time about the institutional injustices against Roma people. In the same year, the new right-wing government started to oppress any oppositional voices in the media, and he had no choice but to resign. He moved to England and had to restart his life completely. After a year he started missing to do creative works so he bought a camera and started learning photography on his own, and planned some photo series.

When he was looking for inspiration he naturally turned towards social topics such as the mass emigration of East-Europeans or oppressed journalism in Hungary. When he was working on these series, his aim was to give faces to these important social problems, and make these issues imaginable for the wider audience. The photo series containing “Basic Human Rights” was recently nominated for the 7th Fine Art Photography Awards in Professional Photojournalism. In the last three years he has been working as a freelance fashion photographer for smaller studios in London. Find him at https://www.studio90s.com.

Cold Mountain Review is published once a year in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Support from Appalachian’s Office of Academic Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences enables CMR’s learning and publications program. The views and opinions expressed in CMR do not necessarily reflect those of university trustees, administration, faculty, students, or staff.

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