The Balaton lake is the biggest lake in centrale Europe and as Hungary is enclaved, it is often referred as the “Hungarian Sea”. Since the 1960’s, Balaton has become a major destination for for the Hungarians and other Eastern European countries. “As we can’t travel to Spain, Italy or Greece, Balaton was the most accessible destination for the average Polish. Me and my family were lucky enough to go and spend our holidays in what seemed to us paradise”. Twenty years later, while Michal Solarski flicked through a family photo album, he only found a single photo of Balaton. A photo of him and his sister, the only image to show for these last six summers. Between 2010 and 2011, he tried “to see the world through the eyes of a small boy who spent his summer with his sister and parents twenty-years earlier” and from this produced the series “Hungarian Sea”.
Photos by © Michal Solarski
Translated by Molly Sisson