The Dice Man
A crystal city permeated by cold, ethereal light. Infinitely tall buildings rushing past beyond the car window, the blinding shimmer of water: the Budapest I knew as a small child. The few memories from that time are like gemstones to me. The once-quiet, shining city of my memories now feels in ruins—loud with crowds rushing through dark streets like floodwater. Distant and frightening, or friendly, tired faces. Real. But if I pay close attention, the empty alleys and winding stairwells still echo with my long-lost parents’ voices. This is a city I can touch, I can smell—and if I walk its every street, perhaps I will understand it as well.
In 2023 I undertook a year-long, algorithmic pilgrimage through my hometown, Budapest. Guided by childhood drawings, inherited photographs, and recorded dreams, I walked all 23 districts of the city in an attempt to reclaim space and time for myself. A pair of eight-sided dice—one for direction and one for distance—determined my destinations, transforming the metropolis into an oracle, a game of passage.
I want to return to our abandoned family home in the very middle of Budapest, to stand one last time before the vast windows overlooking the Danube, to see the golden reflection of the sunlight. The view has returned in my dreams since childhood—a silent city in dazzling light, its gray buildings swallowed by an endless flood.
One of my earliest memories is of my father standing by the window, gazing at the hill across the river and at the clouds above. Within those walls, where my childhood began, his life ended—when I was seven, he lost his battle with cancer. A year later, my mother died on an icy road in February, on her way to the countryside with my birthday presents. Our grandparents told me and my little brother that she had to stop somewhere because of the heavy snow. A few days later, when the family gathered, they told us the truth. My brother cried, but I didn’t; my tears had already run dry. The years before that day feel more like mythology than memory, set against the brooding anxiety that followed—the thousand branching paths of “what ifs” in my dreams, and the sacred order I long to glimpse behind the overwhelming chaos. I search for God, or for the final proof of His absence.
A part of me remained a child, believing that someone would one day explain why things happen the way they do. But as I wish to move forward, towards a life in which I'm able to offer the sense of safety I was only briefly allowed to know, I have no choice but to embrace the uncertainty I have always tried to interpret. Carrying my sad-beautiful inheritance—my nightmares and fading memories—I surrender myself to chance as I spiral into my beloved, secret city, trying to shake the curse of loss from my shoulder.
Let my favorite things accompany me on this quest—the morning mist, the sunlight filtering through the bus window, and the people I love. Let the streets my mother once sketched in ink surround me, and the gnarled black winter trees frozen in my father’s black-and-white photographs lead the way.
The project was supported by the Budapest Photography Scholarship in 2024, and was exhibited at 8F Gallery - Capa Center Budapest in 2025, curated by Gabriella Csizek, along with a fold-out publication designed by Zoltán Szmolka.
The project is ongoing, with the prospect of evolving into a book within the framework of my DLA research at MOME, titled Ars Ludens: The Photobook as Play-Object and Oracle.
