TOMOYA IMAMURA

Petőfi‘s Corpse

website
Instagram

The series attempts to describe a Hungarian present whose post-socialist reality nourishes a new form of nationalism. A people who have been opressed for centuries, whose culture and education has centred around the history of said opression is searching for a new enemy to blaim in this new free, but unfair world.

This image series combines documentary photography and staged images, though it remains unclear how much manipulation took place in each picture. Part of this staging are paper-mâché objects, which represent communist-, as well as Hungarian national symbolism. They serve as a white projection surface or burntout form. For outsiders, they are almost the only direct reference to Hungary, although the national symbolism depicted does not provide more information about Hungary than the occasional Hungarian-language lettering. The location thus remains in Eastern Europe and emphasizes the communist veil that poured the former Eastern bloc into uniform concrete.

The 1kg-loaf of bread is a recurring element in the series. It is a standardized remnant of the socialist system, but also draws a parallel to the „body of christ“ and the religious aspects of the right-wing-movement. Connected to the work‘s title it highlights Sándor Petőfi as a national „messiah“, whose death is just as unclear, as the evolution of Hungary‘s historical self image.

Tomoya Imamura (*1991 in Duisburg) is a Hungarian-Japanese photographer and designer from Germany. He graduated from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. His work combines a documentary approach with staged imagery, mostly around the topic of ideology and the right-wing movement in Europe.
Imamura has photographed for VICE Germany and was featured on several photography sites (paper journal, yet-magazine, gupmagazine etc.). As a designer and illustrator he won a RedDot amongst other awards, as a photographer he was a finalist, got short-listed and made second places in a number of international awards.

Copyright © Tomoya Imamura, all rights reserved

error: Content is protected