Balázs Varga photographer

Poklade – „behind the mask there is the darkness of the subconscious”

„Poklade” is a traditional festival that takes place in the city of Mohács in south Hungary.

The event has mixed croatian, serbian and hungarian origins.
Each year for a whole week, more than 60.000 people are coming from all over eastern Europe and the Balkans to see the monsters with wooden masks and huge sheep-fur costumes, chasing away the winter. The first written memories about this folk tradition are dated back to the end of the 18th century.

The monsters called „busó” are accompanied by the „sokác” who has their faces covered with veil and the „jankele” who are wearing rags.
During daytime, busó groups are marching around on the streets with their strange self-built vehicles, scaring and joking with the visitors. There are vendors, concerts, folk-dance shows and food trucks to entertain people. In the evening, some locals open their gardens for guests for drinking and talking, while others are setting up bonfires on the streets. The event is very important for the locals to preserve their identities and to have social connection with the each other and the visitors.

As the participants have their faces covered with masks, they are transforming into creatures from another world, to whom regular rules and morals do not apply anymore. They can keep their identities hidden, while they are in a peculiar mindset that has no connection with their everyday lives. Many times genders are also hidden behind the costumes. The transformation is also fueled by alcohol, so the rage gets more intense by the night.

Being in the „busó group” is getting more and more popular each year amongst the young people of the city, last year almost 2000 dressed up participants were registered.
When I first went to see and photograph the event in 2015, I was immediately struck by the power and energy that’s being present. What made me interested in documenting it, and visit it for 4 years in a row, was the raw primal pagan spirit that was obviously present during these days. I knew that I don’t want to make a regular descriptive reportage of the event, but rather to grasp that certain pulse that is coming straight from the ancient common subconscious.

I think such festivals are not only important in a cultural sense, but also maintain the mental health of the participants, as they can release their stress from everyday life, and connect to an ancient power, that the modern society is trying
to hide from us.

I shot the event between 2015-2018