Photobook

Sára Somogyi, Márton Vincze and Gábor Bácsfai are all former students of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, who studied and lived in Hong Kong on a scholarship in the fall of 2019. Our art book follows their stories, impressions and experiences, illustrated with Gábor’s photos. Their time in Hong Kong is interesting not only because they lived in a completely different culture for a few months, but also because of the events during their stay. In 2019, a series of demonstrations that had never been seen and experienced before swept through the East Asian city-state, some of them were well-thought-out and organized, while others were drastic, spontaneous and violent. These events are followed throughout our artist’s book, in which the objective, brief presentation of the demonstrations and their events is contrasted with the subjective experiences of the three students, complemented by our own graphic solutions and language, thus creating a mixed, multidisciplinary work of art. Photos in the book made by Gábor Bácsfai capture the atmosphere of the events up close.

The titles of each illustrated chapter are Cantonese proverbs, which are good metaphors for the flow of events and narratives, and on the other hand, reflect well on the situation in Hong Kong. The AR (augmented reality) content in the book is also a means of presentation and perception. On the one hand, the contents attempt to present the events in depth, and on the other hand, to make the receiver a part of them. By directing our smartphone to specific pages of the book, various motion images are displayed, and atmospheric sound effects recorded on the spot can be heard.