Danubian clouds

The plane takes off, for one minute it seems to move toward the downtown, but then turns sharply south, it follows the line of the Danube. On both sides of the river’s strip, the colorful chessboards of arable lands, mining lakes and salty backwaters shine in the vaporous afternoon sunshine.


After crossing the Serbian border, the plane soon reaches Vukovar where the Danube, obeying the orders of the old kings, turned to the east, and still outlines the boundaries of a missing country. The plane, before saying goodbye to that country, and continuing its journey south through the long Serbian corridor in front of the crowded rooms of the small Western Balkan peoples, describes an elegant circle above the last river bend, which, along with its three tributaries, draws a complex circuit on the Bačka plain.


The Erdőd (in Croatian, Erdut) Bend, as the Danubian Islands blog writes, was forced to turn to east by the Erdőd loess range, which rises up to sixty meters above the river. The loess range, extending from Almás to Erdőd, is well visible on the map of the First Military Survey (1763-1787). To the east, at Almás the Drava flows into the Danube, from the south the stream, which the map still calls Weis Graben, and from the north the tiny river of Mostunka. If, on the map of Mapire.eu, you click on Options, and then you set the layer of “First Military Survey” to 0%, you will see that the lake under the former Rácz Millidits and today’s Srpski Miletić, which, in the foreground of the photo, repeats the bend in the shape of a half moon, gathered up from the water of the river.


The afternoon vapors have become thicker, and a multitude of tiny clouds rise up from the hot plain, forming a threatening cloud cup. Sometime, when kayaking on the Danube, we used to look up worried, whether it would be poured upon us before we camped. Below, the Danube is the reality, the paddle strikes, the country borders. From below, the clouds floating above the large water belong to it: they are the Danubian clouds. Seen from above, the three-dimensional world of the clouds is realistic and self-contained: they do not belong to anything, least to the tiny strip meandering on the worn cloth of the earth. Nevertheless, they are the same Danubian clouds. This is why I could send this photo to the Danubian clouds photo contest of the Danubian Islands blog, where it won the first prize. The river has been stretched to the sky, “the foundations flew upon high.”

Tamás Sajó: The cloud looks back

Letter to the frontline

“Жди меня и я вернусь” – “Wait for me, and I will come”, wrote Konstantin Simonov in 1941 in his letter from the front to his girlfriend and later wife, the Soviet movie star Valentina Serova (who, however, did not wait for him, but mixed up with Marshal Rokossovsky). The poem, that became public only months later, together with the music of Matvey Blanter, became one of the unofficial hymns of the Great Patriotic War, and kept up the soul and hope of millions of soldiers and soldier’s wives.

In the now-running Ukrainian patriotic war, the tables turn, and women left at home send letters to the frontline, to urge their beloved ones to endure, and to foster patriotism in every Ukrainian. This is how the letter is introduced by filmmaker Ivan Kravchyshyn, who, together with his wife Natalia, designed and photographed each page of it, and whose films – such as Політ золотої мушки (The flight of the golden fly, 2014) – fit together with the visual world of the album..


Because the letter is nothing but a twelve-page album. On each page, a beautiful Ukrainian girl is looking at the reader, dressed in the costume of a different Ukrainian historical region. The pieces of the costume are authentic: most of them come from museums in Kolomea, Tarnopol and Prelesne, as well as from the private collections of Natalia Kravchishin and three of the girls photographed. On the back of each photo they give a detailed description of each piece of clothing, they mark their place of origin on the map of the traditional regions of Ukraine, and add archival photos to show how they were worn at that time.

To encourage our sons fighting on the front with girls dressed in national costumes, and at the same time to fasten national cohesion, may seem archaic to us, who saw similar publications from the time of the First World War. But the idea fits well with the nation-building endeavor of a belated nation. The photos, the girls, the costumes are beautiful, the typography tasteful, and the archive photos and texts well-rounded and informative.

What a pity that the letter has not been signed by the whole of Ukraine. The Bukovinian Romanian, Galician Pole, Black Sea Russian, Holichian Karaim, Crimean Tatar, Subcarpathian Hungarian soldiers perishing on the eastern front are looking in vain for the pictures of their loved ones in the album. These ethnic fragments shredded from here and there into Ukraine have been forgotten in the heyday of nation-building.

For them, pars pro toto, plays the Hungarian version of Wait for me and I will come, which may be a surprise to the speakers of the other languages, too. In fact, this is not identical with the well-known version of Blanter. Inasmuch as it sounds authentically Russian, it comes from the Hungarian composer Henrik Negrelli. You can make a hit, singing it with a Russian text in a Russian company. The Hungarian translation was done by Sarolta Lányi, who probably did not have the front in mind, but rather her husband Ernő Czóbel, who kept her in countenance with his letters from the Siberian Gulag. It is sung by the great Hungarian actor Iván Darvas, whose mother was a Tsarist Russian emigrant in Prague, and who in 1945 served as an interpreter to the Red Army, and in 1956, organized a revolutionary committee against the Soviet invaders, for which he spent two years in prison and worked for years as a factory laborer; and then in 1965 he featured in the pro-Soviet cult film The Corporal and Others, so he also might have had a multifaceted relationship with what he sings about.


Konstantin Simonov: Wait for me. Hungarian translation by Sarolta Lányi, music by Henrik Negrelli, sung by Iván Darvas

Жди меня, и я вернусь. Только очень жди, Жди, когда наводят грусть Желтые дожди, Жди, когда снега метут, Жди, когда жара, Жди, когда других не ждут, Позабыв вчера. Жди, когда из дальних мест Писем не придет, Жди, когда уж надоест Всем, кто вместе ждет. Жди меня, и я вернусь, Не желай добра Всем, кто знает наизусть, Что забыть пора. Пусть поверят сын и мать В то, что нет меня, Пусть друзья устанут ждать, Сядут у огня, Выпьют горькое вино На помин души... Жди. И с ними заодно Выпить не спеши. Жди меня, и я вернусь, Всем смертям назло. Кто не ждал меня, тот пусть Скажет: - Повезло. Не понять, не ждавшим им, Как среди огня Ожиданием своим Ты спасла меня. Как я выжил, будем знать Только мы с тобой,- Просто ты умела ждать, Как никто другой.

Wait for me, and I’ll come back! Wait with all you’ve got! Wait, when dreary yellow rains Tell you, you should not. Wait when snow is falling fast, Wait when summer’s hot, Wait when yesterdays are past, Others are forgot. Wait, when from that far-off place, Letters don’t arrive. Wait, when those with whom you wait Doubt if I’m alive. Wait for me, and I’ll come back! Wait in patience yet When they tell you off by heart That you should forget. Even when my dearest ones Say that I am lost, Even when my friends give up, Sit and count the cost, Drink a glass of bitter wine To the fallen friend – Wait! And do not drink with them! Wait until the end! Wait for me and I’ll come back, Dodging every fate! “What a bit of luck!” they’ll say, Those that would not wait. They will never understand How amidst the strife, By your waiting for me, dear, You had saved my life. Only you and I will know How you got me through. Simply – you knew how to wait – No one else but you.

Carnival in Sardinia

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“If you want to see a carnival, as there is no other in all the earth, go to Mamoiada, where it begins on the day of St. Anthony, and you will see the herd in wooden masks, the mute and subdued herd, the defeated elders and winning young people, the sad carnival, the carnival of ashes, our everyday history, a joy seasoned with bile and vinegar, the bitter honey.” Salvatore Cambosu: Miele amaro (Bitter honey)

Just a few days, and Lent sets in. In the last days, however, from Shrove Sunday to Shrove Tuesday, the Carnival reaches its summit. It is celebrated in an especially archaic way in the villages of Sardinia. First and foremost in the secluded mountain region of Barbagia, which is culturally a kind of island in the island. And there, primarily in the village of Mamoiada.

Mamoiada is one of the oldest settlements in Sardinia. Next to it, in the double cave Sa Oche e Su Ventu was excavated one of the island’s oldest – twenty thousand years old – human habitation, and the huge rock-cut tombs under the village have been in use since the 6th millennium BC. In the Middle Ages, the remote and inaccessible mountain region could not be really achieved by the Catholic Church: in contrast to the rest of Sardinia, no monastic community has settled next to the village, and its only church was the small shepherd church of St. Cosmas and Damian, far from the settlement. This may also explain the survival of those very ancient carnival and spring-greeting fertility rites, which thousands of years ago were common throughout the Mediterranean, but today their remains are to be found mainly in the mountain villages of the Balkans.


The Carnival of Mamoiada begins on the night of 16 January, the feast of St. Anthony, when fires are lit and masquerade processions organized across the whole Mediterranean. The two types of the Mamoiada processions are the mamuthones and the issohadores. The former, who symbolize some kind of ancient animal or natural force, wear black sheep skin dress, black wooden mask and black cloth, and carry on their back twenty to thirty kilos of copper bells – “sa carriga” – with bone tongues, which accompany with a ghostly roar their slow, rhythmic procession. The latter follow them in red-white Renaissance – or as they say here, “Turkish” – dress, mostly in white masks, with lasso in the hand, with which they try to pull the viewers into the march. The procession ends at the bonfire lit on the main square of the town, where all the participants and spectators are offered a traditional Sardinian plate of beans with bacon, and the whole village is united in a Sardinian round dance – ballu tundu – around the fire.

Today we travel to the Carnival. Now we can illustrate this short report only with the pictures of the booklet of the Mask Museum of Mamoiada. On the evening of Shrove Tuesday we can hopefully publish our own photos on the feast.



Tenores di Bitti: Ballate a ballu tundu (Round dance). From the album Ammentos (1996)

Dissolving: The saddle

What kind of saddle is this on the fence, in the Lisu-Tibetan village of Cizhong/Cedro? If you asked me on the spot, I certainly would have guessed horse or mule.


But ever since I saw this photo, taken by Michael Yamashita not far from here, and published in his photo album on the tea-horse-road Shangri-La. Par la route du thé et des chevaux (2012), I cannot look at it without seeing, instead of the curved spine of the tile-roofed fence, the backbone of the yak.

The sea in Zahesi

I bought the camera in the summer of 2014 in a shop in Tbilisi. I intended it as a work tool. I bought a reflex camera. Thus far I had only taken photos with small compact cameras.

In a short time, the work tool became part of my identity. Its use radically changed my relationship to research. The camera forces you to re-interpret through the lens the meaning of places and people. The flat field and the consequent picture are not the result of a random click. On the contrary, I want to give a conscious visual report on the subject matter of my research. This picture is not merely the view of the space and people existing independently of me, but rather the imprint of an intimate and constant dialogue between us, in which aesthetics and practice merges in an unrepeatable moment.

“What the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once. The photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. The photograph is the absolute particular, the sovereign contingency, the This (this photograph, and not Photography), in short, the Good Luck, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real.” (R. Barthes, Camera Lucida 1)

The flexibility and practicality of the work tool allows me to constantly reinterpret the environment and society around me. Quickly I discovered that even if I take photos of the same space, my pictures are adjusted not only to research needs of the moment and the intended descriptions, but, as taking photos has already become a part of me, also to my momentary moods and visions. It is also very interesting to put the camera in the hands of my informants, so they shoot with it. These images are “seen-from-inside” views of reality, even more personal representations.


I ran down the stairs of the high-rise building. I wanted to go along the main street that cuts the Zahesi quarter in half, and leading to the Jvari monastery. I was filled with enthusiasm by the device in my hand, the idea that finally I can recount – even to myself – the reality around me.

I got to a hitherto unknown part of the quarter. Some women were engrossed in conversation, the black contours of their clothes sharply outlined in the foreground of the gray blocks of flats. I asked them the way. They stared at the camera, one of them absent-mindedly pointed somewhere. I went that way. Soon I found a small building, half-overgrown by vegetation. On its smooth wall, vigorous figures of dancers and musicians, stiffened only by the immobility of the gray material, not fit for dreams. After the block houses, finally something to test my device appears. It was not easy. I felt I was not yet sensitive enough. After a few clicks, with waning confidence I left the stage.

But the bright sun promised everything good. I cared less about the new toy, and more about finding a suitable object, as if Robert Capa had returned to Tbilisi. Lush vegetation all around, a few dilapidated concrete buildings, nothing else. A couple of little boys came toward me on the street, laughing, either of each other or of me. I did not ask. I had to find my subject myself. After a long walk, the sight of a blue spot pierced through the branches. Perhaps an old fountain, or a playground. I never found out. Fish, waves, seaweed. The tiny tiles of the mosaic were carefully arranged by the worker or artist, commissioned personally by Brezhnev, or maybe only by a local functionary, to bring some liveliness in the housing estate. The sea in Zahesi. Kitano in Zahesi.


Kelaptari: Sacekvao. From the album Georgian Dancing Melodies (2012).

One year in Subcarpathia

On 17 January, when the Subcarpathian photos of László Végh were published in Magyar Nemzet, I shared them on the Facebook of río Wang. Now, in preparation for our late April Galician tour, I saw them again, and I thought I’d also share them on the blog. So that they can be seen by more people, and not only in Hungarian.

Olena moved several decades ago from Moscow to Kőrösmező/Yasinya

“Thanks to the József Pécsi Scholarship of Photography, the photo reporter of Magyar Nemzet has repeatedly visited Subcarpathia. He met with soldiers returning from the battlefields, families mourning for their relatives, Tatar refugees from the Crimea. And with extraordinary hospitality.

One does not start a major photo report without preparation, so I also started to inquire on the subject before going to Subcarpathia. First, I contacted a local journalist, who accompanied me to several places, introduced me to a number of persons, and, when necessary, translated for me. He was my fixer, as those persons with a local knowledge are known in the journalist jargon, who, in the course of a major field work, guide and assist foreign journalists and photographers.

The first time I went there was March. I clearly remember the day. I went to Verbőc/Verbovec, to the funeral of a soldier fallen in the Eastern Ukrainian conflict. After three hundred and sixteen kilometers I arrived at the border. Passport. Documents. Control. Arrival in Subcarpathia. Bad roads. The imprints of the past, everywhere. Grayness. Pouring rain. And, on the way out of Bereszász/Beregovo, police fines. Not little ones. Nearly an hour of delay. Exhausted, I returned to my quarters.

Funeral of Viktor Márkusz. He served at the 128 Mountain Infantry Brigade

However much I tried, the first few times I could not find the local rhythm. Then I was presented to more and more people who helped me. For example, Aunt Slava, whose son is a 22-year-old soldier on contract. She is in permanent contact with the Subcarpathian soldiers at the front, she knew the answers to all my questions, and helped me in everything. Otherwise, she teaches Ukrainian language in the Hungarian class of a bilingual school.

And quite often I had good luck. For example, in Kőrösmező/Yasinya, where I accidentally set out in the wrong direction to the mountains, this is how I stumbled upon Olena, who moved from Russia to Subcarpathia. Or when one evening, on the way to our lodgings, we caught sight of a flickering candle in a neighboring window. Our host, a Hungarian family, told me that an old lady lived there, Mária András, who prays every morning and evening like this. We managed to get in to visit her, and she allowed me to take some photos of her while praying. Or Uncle Frédi in Fancsika/Fanchykovo, who heard about my wandering about in Subcarpathia and shooting people’s everyday life. He told a friend of his in the village that he’d be happy to show me his doves.


And there were the Hungarian families who lost their loved ones in the war. I spent hours with them. On many occasions I did not even take my camera out, we just talked. On 16 September, Sándor Lőrinc was buried in Fancsika. When I heard about the funeral, I got into the car, and went to see the family the previous evening. I introduced myself, I told them who I was, where I came from, what I was after. I talked a lot to Sándor’s mother, Aunt Anna. I was also allowed to be present at the all-night vigil in a small room of the small house, at the coffin covered with the Ukrainian flag. The next day, at the funeral, there were many people, all the inhabitants of the village. And many Ukrainian soldiers, whom I had met in Verbőc in March. They approached me, and said they hope to meet us next time at some more cheerful event.

After the funeral I wanted to return to Budapest. However, Aunt Anna told me I cannot go before having dinner with them. I made excuses, but she would not let me go. They even packaged donuts for the road. Budapest is far away, it will be fine.

Fancsika/Fanchikovo. Funeral of the Hungarian soldier Sándor Lőrinc, fallen in the Eastern Ukrainian conflict

Wherever I went during this time in Subcarpathia, I encountered a friendly welcome. And not only with Hungarian families. I also visited Tatar families who had fled from the Crimea, and with whom we talked through a computer translation program. The kids really enjoyed it that sometimes we did not understand each other, and we explained ourselves by gestures. Activity. I had visited soldiers, volunteers, who collected food and clothes for the Subcarpathian soldiers on the battlefields. In Aknaszlatina/Solotvino, among the ruins of the old salt mine, we stumbled upon Uncle Yura, who had worked there, and is now a night watchman in the mine area. We also met Uncle Béla, in whose garden there is a huge “crater”, because the ground had collapsed above a former mine.

The number of Hungarians in Subcarpathia has been drastically reduced. In the census of 2001, about a hundred and fifty thousand declared themselves as Hungarians. There are many mixed marriages in which the children no longer speak Hungarian. In the bleak economic situation, only those who are able try to find work abroad. It is much harder who decide to stay. They live on little money from day to day, but they believe that it is not hopeless to stay, and that they will have a future in their homeland. Which, by the whims of history, has changed hands five times in the last hundred years.”

Tales about the Maidan

It was two years ago now, on 16 January 2014, that the parliament of Kiev, under pressure from President Yanukovich, outlawed the hundreds of thousands-strong protests in the Maidan, by then in its second month. Soon the first deadly clashes began between the protesters and the corps of the Berkut, the riot police.

The Western internet portals now mainly remember the anniversary with the photos of Maxim Dondyuk, who achieved his greatest international success with his coverage of the bloody month of the Maidan. In 2015 he was among the Prix Pictet Prize finalists, and won several other awards. The commemorations emphasize the the kinship of his photos with paintings and tales:

“The figures of the Ukrainian civil war appear in iconic settings in his photograph, as if the light and darkness, good and evil clashed with each other.” (Index)

In an interview given to Photography last year, the photographer also points out that his most important sources of inspiration had been not other photos, but paintings, and even battle scenes. The tale-like character of his pictures, however, is not unique. Similar images were taken at the height of the clashes by Mustafa Nayyem, whom we quoted that night, and many other Ukrainian photographers as well. It was apparently a general tendency to take pictures of the Maidan as signs of a supernatural vision, a legend, an apocalyptic struggle between light and darkness.

That this attitude was indeed general, is well illustrated by a fairy tale book published a few months later in Lviv/Lemberg, by the Old Lion publishing house, where the story book on the Ukrainian war was also published later. This book, illustrated in a dreamlike manner by Hristina Lukashchuk – a young writer-architect-designer, author of the highly acclaimed psycho-erotic novel Kurva (Whore, 2013) – also presents the Maidan as a clash between good and evil. It fits the events into the framework of a naively static and mystical, half-Christian and half-pantheistic Ukrainian nationalist worldview, as solemn and devout as cheap prints in folk fairs, through which they take on a universal dimension, and become a heroic example to be followed by the little readers. Its mythology, though in different ways, helps both them and us to understand Ukrainian reality.

Tale about the Maidan

“Once upon a time, very, very long time ago, there was still no heaven, no earth, only the deep blue sea, in the middle of which rose a beautiful green maple tree. The doves of God sat on the branches of the maple tree, and there they cooed, holding council on how to create a wonderful world, and a wonderful man worthy of this wonderful world. They decided to go down to the depths of the sea. When they went down for the first time, they brought a yellow pebble to the surface. This became the Sun. They went down for the second time, and brought up a green net. It became the vault of heaven. They went down for the third time, and brought up a blue stone. It became the Moon. They went down for golden sand: this became the tiny stars. They went down for dark mud: from this they created the black Earth. And this earth produced wheat and rye, and all other crops. And they named this blessed fertile land Ukraine. And in this land a hard-working people settled: the Ukrainians.”

The male representative of the hard-working Ukrainians settling in this land has a striking similarity to the young Stepan Bandera, the father of Ukrainian nationalism, and founder of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which collaborated with the Nazis and made did their dirty work in the form of Polish and Jewish genocide. Which is understandable, since he is considered the original coordinates of Ukrainian history by the official Ukrainian historiography and state ideology.


“This land was very, very rich. In one day you could not go around it, you could not run around it by horse. One end of it was washed by the deep sea, where wonderful monsters lived, in the other end high mountains rose. On the peaks of the highest mountains, hundred-year-old Hutsul women sat, and let white clouds fly from the smoke of their pipes. And the white clouds descended into the valleys, and became those stone idols, which watch over the peace of the Ukrainian steppe.”

A 110-year-old Hutsul woman. Verkhovina, 1926. Photo by Mikola Senkovsky.
(The explanatory pictures and commentaries are additions by río Wang)

“At the foot of the mountains, lakes slept. Through the clear water of the lakes you could see a colorful underwater kingdom, the water dwarves, fairies and mermaids. Between the lakes, the Ukrainians built tiny white houses, baked bread, erected high churches. They loved above all God and their land, and raised their children in love.”

The usual portrayal of mermaids in Russian luboks, 1866

“In winter, St. Nicholas arrived to the Ukrainian kids. To the good ones he brought gifts, to the bad ones, a birch-rod. And in the spring, the swallows flew up and down, carrying with them news of the rich crops, full granaries and a happy homeland.”


“The winter songs and spring round dances, however, did not last forever. Like wild animals, the envious neighbors watched the beautiful land with yearning. Like the black dragon, they rushed at once to Ukraine, to tear off a piece or two of it.”

The drawing leaves no doubt as to which neighbors are concerned. Whose symbol is the white eagle, the Wulf and Brezhnev-faced bear Misha?


“Ukraine has experienced many kinds of domination. Some came from afar, while others were elected by themselves. The centuries passed, one after the other, and the birds of Evil were gathering over Ukraine, like a black cloud. The leaders of Ukraine rarely managed to keep the sky cloudless. Indeed, very often they only had a black hole in the place of their hearts. It always happens so to those who turn away from God and from the people, and worship golden idols instead. The last leader was particularly greedy. He more and more exploited his country and his people. The poorer the people became, the brighter palaces he erected in his large greed.”

The vozhd’, as corpulent as Yanukovich, with a crowned ushanka on his head, is engrossed in contemplating the extorted treasures. The preciouss, the expropriated wildlife, the ships and factories, and the gold coins are easy-to-understand symbols of wealth. But what about the books? The bookshelf is not the usual epitheton ornans of this kind of tyrant. Except for Yanukovich! He was, as we have seen, a lover of books. It is very likely that his hallmark is this unusual status symbol.



“And the sky over Ukraine increasingly darkened with the black birds. People tolerated it for a long time. But finally they ran out of patience. One day, the Ukrainians went out to the Maidan. They demanded a righteous leader for themselves. They wanted to put an end to injustice and wickedness. Shoulder to shoulder they stood there day and night, the prayer, the song and the word were their only weapon. Thanks to them, the Maidan became a church under the open sky. They were so many, that when it got dark, it was revealed that the sky and its stars moved down to earth. And in the morning, the white wings of the doves brought the new day.”


“But suddenly the black birds of the Evil, the killing eagles [berkut] also appeared above the Maidan. They circled menacingly around the doves, and their circle became increasingly tighter. They shed fear and cold on the people, the chill of death. However, the Maidan did not empty, on the contrary, it was filled to the brim.”


“And then the day came when the eagles attacked. And that fight was not that of life, but that of death. However, the fearless ones, even though they were unarmed, did not retreat a step. They were held steady by their unwavering faith in Love. And the predators could not bear this. They finally fled, with falling black feathers. This was also seen by the leader, the blood-sucking tick, and he was frightened of the wrath of God and people. The people won. But the victory was bitter. Many heroes remained forever in the Maidan – beautiful young boys and their unbreakable brethren…”


“After the battle, the doves descended to the Maidan, and carried the souls of the heroes on their wings far, far away, up into heaven. Up to the Sun. Up to God.”


“And from the blood of the heroes, a new tree grew in the middle of the Maidan. Its crown reaches half of the world, and a new life is sprouting in its shadow. And above, in the deep blue sky, the doves of God are hovering.”