International award-winning photo essay
1st place, IPA – International Photography Awards People, Lifestyle category
1st place, BIFA – Budapest International Foto Awards, Representation of People category
To meet with Lőrincz Szamaras was an important and very special experience for me. I spent four days with him, and these days gave me an insight into his everyday life. Lőrincz had known since he was a child that he wanted to work with animals, especially with horses. He lives alone, with his animals, far from noisy cities. Forests, fields, trees and flowers are his home.
The series was born and took its final form in Hungary, Berkenye, during my work in the Photo Village Camp in Drégelypalánk. I am grateful to the organizers and my family for the opportunity to dedicate a full week to this work. Thank you for the inspiring help of Róbert László Bácsi and Ádám Urbán! And I am thankful for Lőrincz’s trust, enthusiastic cooperation and friendship!
The winning series can be viewed on the IPA website and the BIFA website.
2020.
‘His name is Lőrincz Szamaras. Szamaras means DonkeyOwner. He puts the noble ‘cz’ after his name, but with his ID card he proves to me that officially his fate is in his name. He lives far from people, he always wanted to. As a little boy he wanted to be a horseman, he graduated from a vocational school, and then started working with animals. He has been to many parts of the country, at one time he was entrusted with a serious estate, with many large animals. He is an expert on horses, he lists the different breeds and the specifics of individual treatment of them. He doesn’t trust people. He’s afraid of planes flying overhead, he feels like they’re looking for him. He has a smartphone, but they can follow him there too, it’s not safe. He lives in extraordinary harmony with Nature, in a peaceful, family community with his Animals. On cold winter evenings he reads by candlelight, he has memorised the Toldi, wherever I start, he continues. And the way he says the words, that poem, as if it were just about Him.’
János Arany: Toldi
1.
As the wounded hart flees into a shady forest with
his fiery pain, for a stream with cooling waters
and balm to tear on his wound – Oh, but the bed
is dry and he cannot discover the healing balm; his
body is torn by every branch, his body is ripped
by every thorn, and he is more faint now than he
was before
2.
So Miklós plunged on. Sorrow sat on his neck and dug
spurs into his ribs. His heart bounded in his breast
like a horse locked in a burning stable. He hid by a
stream, he hid in the reeds, and found no place to
lay his head. He looked for solitude but found no
cure for the sickness of his soul.
3.
Like the wolf fleeing a shepherd, he flung himself
into a large, dried-up bog. But every reed whispered
– you are the loneliest in all the world. His bed
was of dry reeds, his pillow a clump. His tanya was
roofed by God’s blue sky until night took it under
her wing and drew a tent of darkness above.
4.
Sweet sleep chanced by like a mantled moth but dared
not settle on his eyes for long, or until the bloom
of rosy dawn. It was afraid of the mosquitoes, afraid
of the rankling reeds, more afraid of the wild things
that clatter in the bog, the distant noise of the
pursuing knights, and most afraid of Miklós Toldi’s
heavy cares.
5.
But in the dappled dawn when the mosquitoes dozed
off and the clatter died, it stole down unfolding
two wings over his eyes. And then it kissed his lips
with a nectar of sleep gathered from poppy for the
night, a sleep so enchanting saliva rolled from
the corner of Toldi’s mouth.
6.
But pangs of hunger envied this too, rousing him
soon from his morning sleep, goading and lashing
as he wandered the fields of grass up and down.
He hunted for the nests of field birds – wild duck,
lapwing, mew, and coot – broke into their homes
and robbed them clean, putting his hunger to sleep
with their speckled eggs.
7.
Thirst and hunger stilled with wild bird eggs, he
was buffeted on the waves of his future. Where
should he go? What should he do? Good God! His
feverish soul has nowhere to turn. It would be easy
to go, easy to hide, but his mother would always
stay in his mind. Ah, if she failed to hear from him,
her heart would break.
Listen to Lőrincz’s voice while you look at the photos:
