Capa Grand Prize Fellows – 2015

The three fellowships with HUF 500 000 each have been awarded by the jury of the Capa Photography Grand Prize Hungary to Gábor Arion Kudász for his entry entitled The Human Scale, to Gyula Sopronyi for his Ninety Minutes and to Ákos Stiller for his Roma Bible.

The Capa Photography Grand Prize Hungary was founded in October 2014 by the Capa Center in order to recognize the work of artists who produce an outstanding achievement in the field of Hungarian photography. The awards are decided in two stages by the jury of Hungarian and international professionals.

Capa Grand Prize Fellows

Gábor Arion Kudász: Human Scale

Ottó works three shifts, six days a week. In a single eight-hour shift he oversees the production of 18.000 bricks, the equivalent of 3-4 standard family homes. His dreams are haunted by bricks, but in the twenty years he’s been working in the factory, he insists he never thought of what he would build for himself from one days worth of bricks. Ottó is six bricks tall, that takes about 15 seconds of his life to produce.

The fully automatized plant is operated by five workers. One can not sense human presence in the factory running 24/7. Last year a loading robot put a pallet of bricks on a maintenance worker, 80 times 15 kilograms is 1,2 tons. The strongest man on Earth once lifted a weight of two tons.

Responsibility is a basic building unit of the moral world. Physical and moral weight both have gravity, so one can only carry a certain amount of each.

Gyula Sopronyi: Ninety Minutes
Football games have ninety minutes of playing time during which the floodlights are turned on in the stadium, illuminating not only the football field but, also, the world outside. While hundreds or even thousands of people are watching the game, the surrounding environment changes entirely during this time. Some things become highlighted, aspects emphasised and elevated to a different level of consciousness, but only for the duration of the match after which they become hidden once more.

Ákos Stiller: Roma Bible
A third of Hungary’s population is living below the poverty threshold, every fourth citizen of this third in deep poverty. All of this in a vicious circle from which there is virtually no way out. Those who succeed have hope, and most of the time this hope has its origins in faith. Dozens of small churches undertake pastorship for the Roma, converting the poor, for whom often the only ray of hope is faith, for which it is worthwhile to make the hundredth effort at seeking employment, and which helps them be confident that tomorrow everything will turn better.