Re-Visioning the aftermath of Communism

Since the fall of communism in Hungary in 1989, and the consequent withdrawal of Soviet forces, the significance of the Soviet legacy has been contested by different actors on the political stage. Part of this legacy is the social dislocation and economic decline that was precipitated by the end of socialism. Visually, this has translated into abandoned and dilapidated buildings and infrastructure on a seemingly post-apocalyptic scale. Revisionism continues today. Since 2013, the present Hungarian government has been actively engaged in it through visual means in the civic spaces—street names, statues, buildings, and cultural institutions. How do these successive and continuing revisions of historical narrative affect the semiotic reading of contemporary and archival photographs of urban Hungary? This article draws on documentary evidence as well as the author’s own experience of growing up in post-communist Hungary, to contextualise both archival photographs and the author’s own current photographic practice.