21 June – 6 October 2024 | Capa Center, Budapest

Eastern European Beauty at Robert Capa Center, Budapest (21.06–06.10.2024)

The Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest presents Eastern European Beauty, a landmark group exhibition exploring the evolving aesthetics of fashion photography in the region. Curated by Emese Mucsi, the show brings together seventeen projects that critically and creatively redefine the idea of “Eastern European cool” through photography.

Responding to the global fetishization of post-Soviet style and the so-called “New East,” the exhibition resists reductionist clichés of grayness, grit, and exoticism. Instead, it foregrounds the nuanced, often ironic, and deeply personal visual languages developed by local photographers navigating between glamour and marginality.

Artists featured include Rafal Milach, Julie Poly, Éva Szombat, Zoltán Tombor, and Wanda Martin, whose works traverse intimate portraiture, editorial aesthetics, and conceptual play. Through a hybrid of contemporary fashion imagery and social reflection, the show investigates the complexities of empowerment, identity, and visual culture in post-socialist societies.

Eastern European Beauty acts as both a celebration and interrogation—an anthology of images that complicates what has too often been branded as a trend. The exhibition is open until 6 October 2024.

Photo: Tombor Zoltán - A NELLI című sorozatból, 2024

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