Notes for an Epilogue by Hungarian photographer Tamas Dezsö, made in Romania between 2010 and 2015, examines rural and post-industrial landscapes and lives decades after the fall of the Ceaușescu dictatorship. Conceived in close collaboration with writer Eszter Szablyár, it traces a society negotiating the long shadow of authoritarian rule.
The series turns to what Dezsö and Szablyár describe as a double disappearance: the simultaneous erosion of centuries-old spiritual traditions and the physical remnants of enforced industrialization. Derelict factories, abandoned mines, power stations, and polluted industrial sites appear alongside isolated villages emptied by unemployment and migration. Former sites of repression, such as Doftana Prison and the Dark Room in Sighetu Marmației, anchor the project in the history of political terror, while portraits of shepherds, farmers, and other residents on the margins of society evoke the everyday struggle to persevere after 1989.
The work attends closely to how people survive by dismantling obsolete concrete structures, carrying away iron and bricks "in the manner of termites" to secure basic subsistence. In this way, the work reflects on Eastern European identity at a moment when the promise of democracy and EU accession coexists with disillusionment, depopulation, and stagnation.
The visual language of Notes for an Epilogue relies on color photographs whose desaturated, often wintry palette pushes scenes toward an almost monochromatic register. Carefully structured compositions balance crumbling industrial forms with human figures that read like characters in a novel, while restrained tones and atmospheric light foster an impression of stillness. Central to the project is Dezsö’s use of a medium-format camera and a slow, meticulous working rhythm, which enables prolonged engagement with places and people and supports his aim to fuse abstract artistic elements with documentary language.
Since 2012 the project has been exhibited widely, from early presentations in Budapest and at the Athens Photo Festival to later solo shows in Portland, San Francisco, Birmingham, Clervaux, and London, as well as collection and survey exhibitions at institutions such as the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, the National Gallery in Budapest, and the National Museum in Warsaw. In 2015 the work was published as a monograph by Hatje Cantz, pairing 69 photographs with Szablyár’s texts.
