Istvan Zsiros

István Zsíros
Borderless Love, 2015
Print on wallpaper
Courtesy of the artist

On the morning of August 30, 2015, a refugee couple exchange a passionate kiss inside their tent at Budapest’s Keleti railway station. Photographer István Zsíros is there to record the unprecedented condition, as 3000 people are packed waiting to leave for Vienna. His lens captures the semi-transparent privacy of the kiss, while the people around seem lost in their anxieties and reminiscences. Zsíros photograph evokes photographs of kisses in the public sphere, which juxtapose personal passion with historical circumstance and the city; Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph from the end of World War II in Times Square, or the one taken by Robert Doisneau in Paris. This kiss, however, has nothing triumphant or heroic about it; it is the desire that survives despite persecution and displacement. It stands as a reminder that, while we speak of the deterritorialisation of digital culture, there is another, harsh and violent, deterritorialisation taking place all around us. People lose their homes, families and lovers are separated for months or maybe forever. Contemporary love cannot only be found online, but in the ruins of war.

https://www.zsirosistvan.hu/

 

 

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