Balázs Varga photographer

Balázs Varga - Liminality

In anthropology, liminality means the transitional phase connecting/dividing two stages or spatial processes. In this personal project I am looking back on my life up to this point, and realize a multitude of dividing lines standing out.

If we are looking at the periods marked by the terms ‘before’ and ‘after’, each unit appears to be transitional, is something “in between”. Most of us are at the end of a certain chapter in our lives - a choice of ours, our age, a circumstance or a traumatic event. We get to a phase in between the past that is over and the future that is yet to come. This is the liminal space.

The word comes from the latin word “limen” which denotes the threshold value of an arbitrary point of entry or beginning. Writer and theologist Richard Rohr describes this particular space like this: “Where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence.” So we don’t live our ‘old lives’ anymore but at the same time, the new hasn’t been formed yet. The obscurity and insecurity of this intermediary space often triggers anxiety.

My last few years have been all about this transition. The period of the pandemic, the end of it, and all the traveling, foreign projects and jobs as a consequence
of it. All along I always knew that each two-week or monthly period was only temporary. I felt that my well-accustomed life was being turned upside down, almost coming to an end, and that what had only started would only last for a certain period of time.

In this project I attempted to capture the duality of this feeling visually. The photos are often taken in physically also liminal spaces, mostly suburban, transitional places that do not really belong anywhere and therefore to no one.

This project was my first gallery solo exhibition in 2022

2018-2021