As a photographer and especially as a documentary/journalism adjacent photographer I often feel like there are some subjects that are, to put it bluntly, bummers. I often lack the motivation or excitement to even consider projects that I feel are sad, hopeless. There are also many many projects on these types of topics out there, which can make it feel like there is no point in doing another one myself.

The trouble is, these are the defining topics of the current era and likely the defining topics of my lifetime. Poverty, nationalism, the climate crisis, the autocrathic shift in my country and many others and the people not just left behind but actively oppressed by the political and economic system, these are the stories that define our time.

But when I wake up in the morning and consider what I want to spend my day on, my month on, what I want to put my energy towards, it feels sad and disheartening and frankly not much fun to pick one of these topics.

It’s so sad, it’s so tragic, it’s so overdone, why would I want to do it then?

I think if I want to do something that matters, that really matters, then I have no choice but to work on these subjects. Accept the fact, that it won’t bring me fame or success or money, that not many people will get excited when I tell them what I’m working on and that I might live out my life feeling like I’ve tilted at windmills with these projects.

But these are the things that we need to document, that I need to document. Today it might not be popular or interesting to the general public, but some day in the future, when people will want to know what this time was like, these are the projects they’ll need to see. Even if I’m not good enough, even if my work is less good than what other, better photographers do, I can make pictures that 10-20-30 years from now will be valuable as a document of what it was like inn Hungary in 2024.

This is not a fun career, this is a sad, lonely, fruitless mission. The question is, do I care enough about doing something important to accept that I won’t be the fun, interesting guy at parties, that I’ll be the weirdo with the weird obsessions about things we consider to be tragic in a mundane, boring, things-are-as-they-are way.

Being a photographer, having the ability to document, to stand witness is a responsiblity. It’s not fun, I don’t get to wear cool scarves and make popular exhibitions, but it’s the thing that can make what I do more than a self centered hobby.

Well, anyways.