Artist's Books - Vol. 68

During my first year in Germany, I lived in a former student dormitory that had lapsed into a temporary hostel for occasional transients or younger refugees from the Eastern bloc. Those who frequented it referred to it simply as the Hungarian House (Magyar Ház). In my shared room, I had a bed and half a table, on which I constructed a tiny stage out of squared cards, so that I could set up and photograph small-scale art installations. I used a 35 mm Praktica camera (a GDR brand) that I had brought with me from Hungary. Not far from the Hungarian House, I discovered a youth club. Its basement contained a neglected photo lab, where I was able to develop my photographs and make enlarged prints on paper. 

Géza Perneczky, In the Underground Between East and West, in: Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary, Getty Publications (edited by Isotta Poggi & Cristina Cuevas-Wolf), 2018, p. 95-110