This was taken in the summer of 2015 at Lake Balaton in Hungary, and the woman in the photo is my friend Kati. We had just turned 30 and were happy to be single, to not have children and to be free. There was something about that summer for me that had this power. We weren’t questioning our femininity, we weren’t questioning our bodies any more. Kati and Nati are two of my closest friends and we spent that whole summer together, going to the beach, swimming and taking photos. All that mattered to us back then was finding someone we could fall in love with.
Balaton is the biggest lake in Hungary, the biggest in central Europe, in fact. For us Hungarians, it represents the summer. As kids, you’d finish school in June and then until September you’d be at your grandma’s house at the lake. You’d bike around, sit in the garden, read books. They were just these endless post-communist summers with German tourists and Hungarian schoolkids.
The photo was taken in an outdoor shower. Natasha is holding a mirror, putting the light on Kati. We spent a lot of time the day before figuring out how to do it and finding the perfect moment. The idea was to capture this ephemeral moment of self-confidence.
The whole shoot took two or three days, with Kati and Nati running around in the fields, getting naked, swimming. It was kind of amazing to have this time where all you care about is how the water falls and how the light hits. I had the freedom to just make a beautiful image. Because suddenly, after that, the world changed.
During the last days of summer in 2015, there was a refugee crisis in Hungary. Political polarisation increased and many countries, including Hungary, tightened their asylum laws. The government even went as far as building a fence on the border with Serbia and Croatia, forcing asylum-seekers heading west to go through other countries. This crisis had a big impact on us. Those people were desperate, travelling with bags and kids. They’d left everything else behind them. It really hit me that there is a moment when you sacrifice everything in the hope of a better life for your children and family. Propaganda told us to call them migrants not refugees, but they were all just humans.
The summer after that, I met my husband. There was the Brexit vote in the UK, Trump was elected, the Paris agreement brought the climate crisis into sharper focus, and everything started to feel more grown-up.
As a Hungarian growing up under communism, and living now with today’s media manipulation, I feel a huge uncertainty for all of us about what’s real and what’s not. I question everything. Is the end of the world really coming? Did I make a mistake having children? Who do I believe? It is especially hard to navigate the news here in Hungary, because almost all of it is rightwing and controlled by the government. So any alternative views either come through social media or from a few uncorrupt media platforms.
Today, the majority of Lake Balaton has been privatised and developed by people who are close to the government. The System of National Cooperation (Hungarian acronym NER) is creating a new rightwing upper-class in the country. They have acquired most of the old summer camping areas, where a lot of Hungarian kids once got to know the “Balaton feeling”. They are destroying the original lakehouse-style buildings and erecting ugly apartment complexes: “NER cubes” we call them. They all look the same. The north side of the lake is now getting very posh, with lots of lavender ice-cream sort of places.
I still see Kati and Nati often, but in the last eight years a lot has changed. We have very different lives now. Nati is a mother of one, now single. Kati is in a relationship. I am married with two children, working on borrowed time. Looking at those images from that endless summer of 2015 makes me realise that we need beauty and compassion more than ever to remind us of our shared humanity.
Andi’s Gáldi Vinkó’s CV
Born: Budapest, 1982
Trained: Moholy-Nagy University of Art, Budapest
Influences: “Nan Goldin, Arthur Jafa, Siân Davey, I love Sofia Coppola, Vivienne Westwood and Beyoncé. And, of course, the friends who are in my photos.”
High point: “Winning the Kraszna-Krausz photography book award, for my book Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back. I don’t accept any funding or any grants from the Hungarian government so winning the prize means two things. One, that I was right; there is still a lot to say about motherhood. And second, it is worth it as a Hungarian artist to refuse to accept any government funded grants because I’ve shown it is possible to create work and get the acknowledgment without compromises.”
Low point: “When I started talking about making my book about motherhood. No one really believed in it.”
Top tip: “Be patient.”
• The Kraszna-Krausz photography book award symposium celebrating this year’s winner, Andi Gáldi Vinkó, is at the V&A, London, and streamed live on 14 November
