Hajdu Tamas / Romania
Photo location: Romania
Hajdu Tamás was born in Simleu Silvaniei, Romania in 1976. He now is a veterinarian and photographer in Baia Mare, Romania. Tamás held multiple exhibits and won various photography contests, such as being shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards in 2013. His work has been featured in a number of photography magazines: Photomagazine , Punctum, Practical-Photography, Plateformag, Foto4all, Korunk, and Lenscratch. See more.
Hajdu Tamas is the kind of photographer who is not afraid to point his camera at the absurdity of life, even when that life is hard. His photographs of the minutia in small-town Romania present delightful juxtapositions of the old ways of doing things and the new direction in which its residents are trying to move. A high dive towers above an old cemetery, a cow pokes it head out of someone’s backyard bushes with apartment towers visible behind it.
Tamas does not romanticize the environment, but rather takes a self-deprecating approach to the place he calls home. A veterinarian by trade, Tamas hones in on the relationship between the town’s people and animals. Livestock is used for work and for food, yet wanders in and out of the frames with a nonchalant attitude akin to the domestic animals. His exquisite balance of subtle humor and compassion reminds us that it is okay for art to make us laugh.