'Shifting sand of history on the wall'

Zsuzsanna Ardó, 8 May 2005

Subjects:

Here today, gone tomorrow: how street-signs are public memory in the making.

About the author

Zsuzsanna Ardó is a writer, photographer, editor, critic, broadcaster and translator. She runs the Hampstead Authors' Society in London.

Photographed by Zsuzsanna Ardó, Budapest, 1996

“To be a Hungarian is a collective neurosis” – Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.

I took this photograph in Budapest in the mid-1990s. A new street-sign replaces an old one, but the old one remains on the wall, a big line drawn across it. To me, this photo is about the social representation of history shaping our universal consciousness and planting our orientation points. The photo is purposefully lacking in harmony: it’s uneasy, off-balance and cluttered, pulling in different directions to subvert aesthetic expectation... and yet, the woman strides on.

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