There many different kinds of photos in this book, which are none other than my feelings, thoughts and montages of my memories. As mum told me, before I was born in Pesterzsébet, the door of the hospital ward was ajar and she was very frightened because the doctors couldn’t enter the ward through the door that could only we open from the inside. So this is how my birth started.

Some complications and additional anxiety arose, but luckily the nurse skillfully jumped in through the window to open the door for the doctors. So, the first problem was resolved and I was born. I thought that it would be much better outside than behind closed doors. This is how I felt at the hospital on Baba Street from where my mother and father took me home to the famous Jósika Street. I know now that this is where it all started: feelings, sounds, images, smells, anger, passion, love, hatred, peace, quarrels, crying, laughing, innocence, futile childish sins, well-being, continues transition between easy living and struggling to make ends meet between aspiring and the tangled Indian vines of success…

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I must have been around three when my father, who was a pianist, went abroad to work as a musician to support us. My mother and I lived in a tiny one-room apartment and my beloved grandmother lived in the opposite flat. I spent a great deal of time with my grandmother, who adored me, since i was/am her first grandchild. This was 32 Jósika Street, where we woke to music and family concerts. Everyone was all ears to every genre of music, from classical music to traditional Gipsy music, pop, rock and jazz, to whatever the ear desired. We sometimes even fell asleep to the sound of music, if some relative happened to be practicing in the evenings. All this was like a dream full of life and colors. You could alwalys hear, eat and drink something new, because everyone shared the food and drink whenever they could. Roma musicians, Romungros were accepted back then, they were revered and respected and majority society were keen on listening to their music in cafés, restaurants, theatres and escpecially abroad. Life was different back then, values still existed, music and art was financed by the state and was therefore more accessible for the audience than it is today.

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My father often took me along to the concert office on Vörösmarthy Square in the 5th district. I was terrified in the old - fashioned lift, but i wanted to see all the famous artists sipping coffee in the canteen: you could meet Roma, black, white, Spanish, Jewish, Indian, foreign musician singers and dancers there. This was a special expereince for me. The diverse, multicultural, free and often crazy art world touched me, thanks to my father. This is where the world of Roma Icons all started, my fahter’s world: culture, studying, having fun and travelling. This is what captivated me and blew me away to a different, freer world where being different and special represent a value, which people back then bought understood, loved and admired. When daddy went abroad, we, my mother and I, often visited him. I loved to travel. I was excited when we embarked on the journey or arrived at our destination, beacuse it was new, different and exciting. New tastes, smells, colors, a lot of presents from daddy, the countryside… I could pack all this into my suitcase. For me, travelling is one of life’s great gifts and joys, it makes us see clearer, experience more and feel the world and people around us.

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I remember when my father was on tour. He brought me a doll, a piece of jewelry or some other gift back from every country he worked in. He event sent me postcards personally adressed to me, and wrote  „to the artist Erika Lakatos” in the adress line, which I thought was just a great and of course also made me laugh. So, many things I still do today started during my childhood. Oh yes, after arranging and hanging up all of my dolls, jewelry, drawings, postcards, dresses, or whatever happened to pop into my mind, my mother would always say, and sometimes shout: do stop the exhibition, you can continue tomorrow.

Once I grew up, I immediately began to explore the wortld in London, where I learned English, or Germany where I lived with my parents for about one year. Then I visited Amsterdam and Belgium few times with my parents and later on with friends and performed on stage with the Gorgó Troupe in Finland.

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New York City, the city of cities and the gateway to the dream world was the most powerful experience on my life. I could also say that this was where i really grew up, found a life, sprouted wings and learned how to really fly. My six years at university and the year I spent listening to the lectures of my excellent photography Professor Stuart Fishelson was perhaps the most exciting and productive time of my life. Professor Fishelson passed on everything he knew about alternative and analogue photography, knowledge I absorbed like a spong. He knew all the ins and outs of the profession and its techniques. Art simply flowed from every world he uttered, every move he made and one more thing: He emanated love, was sincere and a man of insight. He knew exactly what we are capable of. I was a scholarship student at the university and I initially took photography by -- accident or not — as an extra credit, which is how Professor Fishelson became my lecturer. In terms of people, art and the profession, I finally landed in the right hands, which was a lifting experince and I remembered how I eagerly waited for his classes, just like a little child, beacuse I know he would always show and bring along some sort of photo delicacy, something special for us. He was a calm man and simply let everyone develop at their own pace. He just observed and guided his stundents; however, whenever he found something beautiful and outstanding, he would always quietly make a note of this. In the first semester he asked me whether i felt like entering my photo Princess Sophia’s Dream in a contest sponsored by Canon USA and Viacom. I thought: why not! I won first prize in Washington and came away with the „Personal Vision” award. I didn’t even go to Washington becauce I was in the midst of a divorce with my three years-old daughter in my lap. I recieved the award by mail.

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I took these photos with an old Polaroid camera and an image transfer camera by applying alternative procedures. I find both of these techniques exciting. One makes a print, whilst the other technique also delivers a single photo. It is incapable of reproducing the same picture, their will alwalys be someting different with the final product. This is one of the attributes of this technique, which is why you can experiment and play around with it until you get the picture you were dreaming of. Hands and eye are important here, since this is how you manipulate the raw material into the picture you intended it to be. Colors can be manipulated up to certain point when using a Polaroid, It is also possible to somewhat manipulate shapes and lines. However, additional colors can be added at any given point with the image transfer technique. In other words, you can reconceptualize paint what popped into your mind yesterday, or 10 years ago, and the final product is at times awesome. In spite of how I work with many colors in Roma Icons, I have to say that black and white analogue photos and the darkroom are still the love of my life, especially old photos and hand-painted ones, since these photos are taken in a world that basically no longer exist. This technique is becoming extinct in the digital world, where the photographer no longer needs to think, but instead just presses the button, because the camera does nearly everything else. I would like to stress that there are no computer images in this book. For me, this means that manual intervention, perception, the darkroom, the colors I import and the organic world or feelings excites me much more today, than digital technology does. Perhaps beacuse this imaginery still caries the romantic, dreamy feelings of the old world, which is so important to me. 

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Erika Lakatos