Always have the courage to look behind the words people tell you so you can understand why they say the things they say.

Media:

I am an author, photographer and educator, working at the crossroads of art, documentary, narrative journalism and commercial photography.

I was born and raised in Hungary. I lived in Israel in the mid-1990s and I moved to the United States in the year 2000.

My visual and written work explores the complexities and inner contradictions that characterize us, human beings. Focusing on similarities that connect, rather than on differences that might separate cultures or geographic regions, my work emphasizes the shared nature of responses human beings give to specific life situations and historical contexts. I photographed and written about individual lives in Hungary and Haiti, and about members of the Long Island Afghani Sikh Community, among others.

Languages, education, work:

I speak Hungarian, English, Spanish, French and Hebrew fluently. I have a basic command of Haitian Creole. I hold a Law Degree from Hungary, and an MA in Africana Studies from SUNY Stony Brook, NY. My graduate research focused on the Caribbean, specifically on language, religion and politics in Haiti.

In Fall 2022 I joined the faculty of Africana Studies at SUNY as an adjunct professor and I built a new course syllabus, to teach Themes in the Black Experience through a comparative (Haiti, Cuba, United States, past and present), art-based, humanist lens. Alongside teaching, I have been working as a freelance photographer building my own business.

Awards and publications

My photography won awards at various international competitions in portrait, deeper perspective, people, personal portfolio, lifestyle and wedding categories.

My written work was published in the Root Quarterly, the Columbia Journal, in the Journal of Free Black Thought, The Caribbean Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Cieo and other publications. My work has received financial support from the Africana Studies Department at SUNY, Stony Brook, from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, from the Foundations Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) in the Arts, and from the Shelby Steele Foundation.

Motherhood

Alongside writing, photographing and working as an educator, I spent many years as a full-time mother, raising my two children. I taught them to be fully bi-lingual, curious human beings, who grew up straddling cultures and distances through personal experience, conversations, and reading. I am proud to have taught them the importance of becoming conscientious, informed members of the wider human community, with a keen awareness that there is a whole world out there, beyond the conveniences, the challenges and the stories of their personal lives.