Mine T.
(2006-2008, Colour photos)

Tatabánya (lierally: Tatamine) is a desolate mining-town of 17 000 inhabitants in the north of Hungary. Under the communist regime the city was built with the surrounding coal-mines in mind. The mines have all closed down ever since but the residents have stayed put in the derelict décor of socialist-realist architecture. Present-day teenagers were all born after Hungary's transition to democracy twenty years ago. Had they been born earlier they would have grown up here to become miners just like their parents and grandparents. There are hundreds of such industrial towns this side of the one-time Iron Curtain offering no professional future for young generations growing up in them. The heavy industry that has collapsed in the meantime, once offered clear career prospects and thus guaranteed the social cohesion of the community. This is not the case any more. As a direct consequence of this hopeless situation, the majority of families have fallen apart. Most teenagers may suffer from emotional instabilty anywhere, but here even the surrounding social reality cannot provide any security or hope either.
Children of today's Tatabánya are slowly being initiated into the freedom and responsibility of adult existence remaining trapped however in the heritage of an age that lived under the spell of heavy industry's once promising utopia. They seem to be left on their own without any help from their motherland.