Hungary

FLOOD AFTERMATH: A resident shoveled mud out of her window in the village of Biser, southern Bulgaria, Tuesday. A dam burst Monday after days of heavy rain, sending a torrent surging through a village. The region’s toll from flooding is eight dead, with 10 missing. (Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)

BIG FISH: Fishermen used cranes to pull the carcass of a whale shark from the water in Karachi, Pakistan, Tuesday. The 40-foot whale shark was found dead in Arabian Sea. (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)

ATHENS ANGER: Riot police arrested a protester outside Parliament in Athens Tuesday. Thousands protested against the threat of yet more spending cuts and tax increases as talks continued over a new bailout agreement and debt restructuring. (Alkis Konstantinidis/European Pressphoto Agency)

BURNING THROUGH CASH: Tons of shredded and compressed banknotes were unloaded from a truck at the Foundation to Help Autism in Miskolc, Hungary, Tuesday. Hungary is the only country to recycle its worn cash for fuel each year. The bricks are then sent to a few charities. (Laszlo Balogh/Reuters)

OVERCOMING AN OBSTACLE: Adults escorted students to school on the other side of Ciberang River over a flood-damaged suspension bridge in Lebak, Indonesia, Thursday. (Associated Press)

FLYING HIGH: A boy smiled during a kite festival organized by a craft council at Maidan park in Kolkata Thursday. (Piyal Adhikary/European Pressphoto Agency)

STORYBOARD: Pictures of models were arranged on a board during a rehearsal for the fashion brand Schumacher at Fashion Week in Berlin Thursday. (Markus Schreiber/Associated Press)

STANDARD ISSUE: The military displayed standard items issued to detainees at the ‘Camp Five’ facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Thursday. (Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

DUMPING GROUND: A man sniffed the contents of a bottle at a the ‘Bordo Poniente’ garbage dump in Mexico City Wednesday. Thousands of tons of garbage were deposited at the site until the government closed it. (Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

STANDING TOGETHER: Students took cover behind a tree as police sprayed them with water during a protest to demand changes in the education system in Santiago, Chile, Thursday. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

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Tamas Dezso

Here, Anywhere

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The map of Hungary is speckled with capsules of time. During the political transformation twenty years ago, as the country experienced change, some places were simply forgotten… Streets, blocks of flats, vacant sites and whole districts became little self-defined enclosures, in which today a certain out-dated, awkward, longed-to-be-forgotten Eastern European feeling still lingers. These places seem to be at one with other parts of the city, but their co-existence in time is only apparent; Each place fades in accordance with its own specific chronology, determined by its past. That what remains is then silently reconquered by nature, or enveloped by the lifestyles of the generations of tomorrow. Of the original inhabitants, who’ve never fully integrated with society, soon only traces will remain, until they, too, will inevitably disappear over the course of time.

I do not observe these mini-universes in the hope of recording them in their entirety, but I rather try to capture the essence of these worlds by elevating certain chosen details of this disappearing existence. The series, begun in 2009, examines the typically transitional period and symbolic locations of post-communist space which, due to disinterest or thoughtlessness, is slowly vanishing, and fading into images. But for the time being, they are still around. Here.

Here, anywhere.

Bio

Tamas Dezso is a documentary fine art photographer working on long-term projects focusing on the margins of society in Hungary, Romania and in other parts of Eastern Europe. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME, GEO, Le Monde Magazine, Ojo de Pez, Polka Magazine and many others.

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Tamas Dezso

There's still time! The deadline for entries for this year's National Geographic Photo Contest is November 30. Photographers of all skill levels (last year more than 16,000 images submitted by photographers from 130 countries) enter photographs in three categories: Nature, People and Places. The photographs are judged on creativity and photographic quality by a panel of experts. There is one first place winner in each category and a grand prize winner as well. The following is a selection of 54 entries from each of the 3 categories. The caption information is provided and written by the individual photographer. -- Paula Nelson (54 photos total)
LONE TREE YELLOWSTONE: A solitary tree surviving another harsh winter in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. (Photo and caption by Anita Erdmann/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)

SPIDER-MAN: Owen Kew, 5 years old, of Reading, England, used the ‘spider’ during a physical-therapy session Tuesday to treat a neurological disorder. (Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)

CRASHING IN: Surf crashed in a restaurant as workers tried to close the doors in Cagnes sur Mer, France, Tuesday. (Maxppp/Zuma Press)

TAKING A BREAK: An election worker slept next to a ballot box in an empty polling station in Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday. Turnout for the presidential runoff, which the opposition boycotted, was low. (Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press)

MAKING LIGHT: Electric lines crossed a transmission tower that was built to resemble a clown near Újhartyán, Hungary, Tuesday. (Attila Manek/European Pressphoto Agency)

POLITICAL CHANGE: From left, Robert Biedron, Poland’s first openly gay lawmaker, spoke with Anna Grodzka, Poland’s first transsexual lawmaker, during the first session of the Polish Parliament in Warsaw Tuesday. (Peter Andrews/Reuters)

In an effort to bring the George Eastman House archive online, Dr. Anthony Bannon, Director at George Eastman House in Rochester New York,  has announced partnership with Clickworker, an international crowdsourcing company. The project involves photo-tagging of more than 400,000 images from the George Eastman House, one of the world’s oldest photography museums. Using a guided and tiered tagging system, Clickworker hopes to bring the Eastman archive into the digital age, making the photographs accessible to the public — in many instances, for the very first time. To get these images online, Clickworker is using its global crowd of paid “clickworkers’, more than 115,000 strong.

People who register to work on the project as “clickworkers’ will also be able to see the results of their work just a short while later on the Eastman House licensing website. Among the images from the venerable George Eastman House archive are classic favorites like views of Paris by Eugene Atget and immigration photos by Lewis Hine–but among are some surprises, like the Hippo Back, Hippo Front photographs by Lewis Hine, and the electric portrait of Judy Garland by Nickolas Muray.

Nickolas Muray, American (b. Hungary, 1892-1965) Judy Garland. 1945 Color print, assembly (Carbro) process.

Lewis Hine, Empire State Building construction worker touching the top of the Chrysler building, 1930. Gelatin Silver Print.
Hine was commissioned to photograph construction of the Empire State Building in May 1930. He photographed construction workers, following them up into the sky as the building rose to its height of 102 stories, the tallest building ever erected at that time.

Lewis Hine, Hippo Back.

Lewis Hine, Hippo Front.

Eugene Atget, (1857-1927) Avenue de l’Observatoire, 1926. Silver printing-out paper print.

Lewis Hine, Immigration.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Octopus, 1912. Gelatin silver print.

It's time for another look into the animal kingdom and our interactions with the countless other species that share our planet. Today we have scenes of an elephant rescue in India, a loyal dog bidding a final farewell, a competitor in the Open Rabbit Sport Tournament, and a rather unfortunate moose discovered intoxicated and tangled in a tree. These images and many others are part of this roundup of animals in the news from the past several weeks, seen from the perspectives of their human observers, companions, captors, and caretakers. [44 photos]

A dog casts a long shadow in the morning in St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 28, 2011. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Prostitute at angle of Rue de la Reynie and Rue Quincampoix, 1933

Brassai with Tony Ray-Jones, Creative Camera, April, 1970

Tony Ray-Jones: How did you start your life?

Brassai: I was born in Transylvania in 1899. My father was a teacher of French literature. He lived in Paris and loved it and studied at the Sorbonne. When I was five my father brought me and my family to Paris for a year. I

In today’s Pictures in the News, Israeli soldiers secure the areas near the sites of several attacks in southern Israel; internally displaced children are at a settlement camp in Mogadishu, Somalia; the aerobatic team “Falcons of Russia” performs outside Moscow; and competitors are nearly a blur as they paddle in the 39th Flatwater Kayaking and Canoeing World Championships in Hungary. These are just a sampling.

The Half King in New York City is hosting an exhibition of Hungarian photographer Tamas Dezso’s photographs of rural Romania. Opening on August 2nd, the show is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions and intimate opening night discussions with a featured photographer. Dezso’s tableaux are an enchanting take on a gritty, time-forgotten reality. The lush images suggest settings for mythical tales where the demigods and fantastical creatures have fled the scene. Dezso: “There is historical resentment between the nations of Hungary and Romania over the possession of Transylvania. I had the naive idea of bringing the people of both nations closer together through photography. And I also wanted to document and thus preserve the unique rural part of Romania on the verge of disappearance.”

Andrei Codrescu, The Hole in the Flag: “We began to see the first pointy haystacks that are characteristic of rural Romania. I have never seen haystacks like these anywhere in the world, and I watch for them. There are countless popular sayings involving haystacks. ‘Timişoara,’ someone told me, ‘was the spark over a very dry haystack.’ With snow on them they looked like the peasants’ lambskin hats. They are baled by hand by young people who work singing until way past dusk on long summer days. When the stars come out, they fall exhausted on the hay, and many romances begin that way. By winter the romancers have married, and the hungry cows eat the snowy hay. In the days of the Turkish occupation highwaymen used to hide in the haystacks from the Turkish patrols, which would stab the haystacks at random to see if anyone was there. Angry fathers whose daughters hadn’t come home for supper would likewise pitchfork their stacks. Many a curious scar, called the love fork, adorned the young men of rural Romania. I had always loved the touchingly tender way the Romanian haystacks dot the fields, a kind of writing legible only to crows.”

Dezso: “Romanian orthodox nuns attend the Sunday religious service near Caianu. These nuns were heavily involved in social work providing food and clothing for those deeply in need. Their order owned a single car with which they randomly entered extremely dangerous, poor gypsy villages at night to throw out packages containing supplies. They did not even stop the car or else they probably would have been attacked.”

Donnica Garleuleb of Damuc village, central Romania, stares through the unkempt plants sown by herself in the family’s garden. Everyday, from her house window Donnica watches the gradual decline of the garden, once installed for her children. The children have left some years ago for work in Germany, like many others from the region.

Car approaching Reghiu village through the riverbed after the floods washed away the bridge of the only road leading to the village. A string of floods hit some two-thirds of Romania’s territory in 2005.

Locals at the village Calvini feast in the tent put up in the rectory’s garden on the day of St. Nicholas, the major patron saint of the Orthodox Church.

Dezso: “Boys kickboxing on the main street of Buzescu. The gypsy community created a bizarre cityscape here. They erect pompous buildings to show off their wealth, many of which stand uninhabited afterwards. As I entered the village the two guys stopped kickboxing when they saw me approaching with a camera in hand. I had to ask them to continue what they were doing before we arrived. In most parts of Romania the Gypsy population is almost always found on the periphery of the given town or city but here in Buzescu it is the opposite. Gypsies own the center of the village completely. There is a leader among the gypsies, called the Bulibasha who I had the opportunity to meet. We stumbled upon each other in front of his palace. He was wearing a tie completely made of fine gold and was excitedly awaiting the arrival of his new Bulibasha hat, which soon arrived, riding in the backseat by itself in a yellow Dacia.”

Lumberjacks rest near Sighisoara.

Dezso: “Early on a winter morning, a young boy is off to work to saw firewood for locals in Odobesti and nearby villages. This picture was taken a year before Romania’s accession into the European Union. I choose this image as the closing piece of my original Romania essay. For me this picture symbolized the road to a brighter world on which the young man sets off on, taking a last glimpse back at his home country.”