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

Media:

With Connie Morgan on The Free Black Thought Podcast

A conversation on the Free Black Thought Podcast about my background, about the importance of looking beyond one's own culture and education, and about the importance of reciprocity. Please click the link to hear the interview. Voice only.

I am a photographer, author and educator, working at the crossroads of art, documentary, narrative journalism and commission-based 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. I have a Law Degree (ELTE Budapest, Hungary), and an MA in Africana Studies (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 curriculum, to teach Themes in the Black Experience through a comparative (Haiti, Cuba, United States), art-based, humanist lens.

I am a self-taught editorial photographer. Samples of my artistic-documentary work can be viewed here. My commercial work samples can be viewed here.

My documentary projects explore the complexities and inner contradictions that characterize us, human beings. Focusing on similarities, rather than on differences between cultures or geographic regions, my work emphasizes the shared nature of responses human beings give to specific life situations and historical contexts.

As a commercial photographer, I like to combine the classical, artistic style of Eastern Europe with the cinematographic, adventurous approach of the United States. I have been doing freelance work for private clients, studios and companies, such as MOM365 on Long Island (newborn photography), Park Ave Studio and Silverfox Studios (weddings), LifeTouch (event and sports photography for schools).

I speak Hungarian, English, Spanish, French and Hebrew.

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, the Equiano Project, 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. For further details visit the Awards section of my site.

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 intimate stories of their personal lives.