The loneliness of the Hungarian microvillages

Hungary has an aged population. The countryside is getting abandoned, the young move to the city. The elderly are left alone in their natal homes, and the big farmhouses become empty. When they die, the environment they lived in also decays. In Hungary the estimated lifespan of men is much shorter than that of women, hence, most of the old people are widows. I took the series of pictures in a Hungarian microvillage called Erzsébet (Elizabeth). This is a typical settlement of 300 inhabitants with all the characteristic problems of the Hungarian countryside. This is the village of my grandmother, the photos was taken of her and her contemporaries, “goodies”. They were all born before the II. World War, in a world networked by folk traditions. They all experienced communism, socialism, the change of regime, and the decay of the countryside in our modern times. Their villages vanish. Out of the 3150 settlements of Hungary 1800 share their fate.