Tell your Momy, bring some money!
2005. (digital photos)
I was planning for a long time to make a series about the countryside of Hungary. When four years ago, in summer, I heard the horn of a Family Frost car, I immediately decided that I would like to sit in a car like this. Moreover, I wanted to travel across the country with such a car. In summer of 2005. I made 5000 kilometers with different vans from the network.
I reached more than a hundred locations in 6 counties. At the same time the car with its very typical horn sold ice cream, frozen chicken and grated pumpkin. My pictures were taken in hidden places, I visited places were the moving fridge took me, otherwise I would have never reached such places. I spent a month this way, what corresponded completely with an average driver’s job. Six days a week by one van, but always with different drivers. On the weekends, I travelled to the next ’depo’. Meanwhile, I noticed that the F.F. vans were already the indispensable parts of the small villages: they arrive once a week and besides bringing the products, they bring the news as well. Furthermore drivers have been keeping ’familiar’ relationships with their costumers. There are no turistic attractions in these villages, no highways crossing them, no floods pooring over them. They are neither in the news, nor in guide books, and buses stop there only twice a day. My goal was to travel around a Hungary, which I haven't known yet.
Therefore, the felicity of seing the van is understandable. This act is the most important thing of the week: so, even those who wont buy products, will also come out to have a look at it. The specific signal of the F.F. vans plays an important role in the local folklore. Jokes were made about it and people versified rhymes based upon it – I have borrowed the title of my work from one of these sounds too.
The pictures are ironic on one hand, however, they were not taken to make fun of the people. Everyday life brought the grotesque scenes. It was enough to deliver some frozen food, to make those people buy them, who at the same time keep chicken and pumpkins in their gardens too. 2/5 part of Hungarian population live in such villages.
