Two Strokes

The original negatives and paper images, mostly from private collections, have been collected and processed by the exhibition’s organizers over a period of ten years. Selected from around 500 photographs, 100 of them reveal the strange, romantic relationship between private individuals and their vehicles. We see young people longing for a car or a motorbike, posing in front of their desired vehicles in poses borrowed from film screens, and new car owners behind the wheel, speeding along or changing a wheel. There are the envious western car gazers and sidecar motorcyclists, the coach commuters and the rural commuters on the dirt roads.

A small part of the material gives a glimpse into the everyday life of the most important bus stations in Budapest and the countryside, revealing the sometimes architecturally unique world of these sites, and recalling the atmosphere of the first ÁFOR service stations.

The selected images are thus both part of Hungarian technical and architectural history, as well as private or family curiosities, which draw a curious arc of a forgotten or unknown portrait of Socialist Hungary.

The photographs are accompanied, in an unusual way, by bits of fiction, in the form of short quotations. The writings are invariably about the adventures of travelers, with profane or elevated reflections on the vehicles, journeys and passengers of the period.

Venue: Budapest, 11th district, the Main Building of the Bucharest Square Bus Station