The “Urban Symmetry” series by Zsolt Hlinka presents Budapest’s monumental buildings along the Danube River, which are cropped out of their original context and instead set against plain backgrounds that match the buildings’ colors, making them available for isolated study. But there’s a twist: on Zsolt’s pictures, we don’t see the original buildings, but their reflected visions. The result is essentially a number of fictitious buildings that still perfectly grab and condense their original character into themselves. As the photographer writes on his webpage: it’s “as if you could see human faces and different personalities on the building portraits”.After the series was covered by the leading architectural website Designboom, Architizer also posted an article about Zsolt Hlinka’s photo series. According to the site, “Budapest is well on the way to becoming Central Europe’s premier destination for contemporary architecture, with projects such as ONL’s Bálna Budapest recently completed and SANAA’s National Gallery of Hungary due to arrive before the end of the decade”.
Journalist Paul Keskeys also adds that “the ornate façadesof older buildings along the River Danube remain one of the region’s greatest assets, and these are celebrated in all their decadent glory by local photographer Zsolt Hlinka”. After a detailed explanation of how the pictures were created, he reaches the conclusion that “the resulting images look like something straight from a movie poster for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, with every window, cornice and roofing detail a miniature artwork in its own right.”
