Best Regards

Postcard series to serious romantics... The project shows different dialogues by the form of postcards, with verbal and visual messages about the lightness, humorous or passionate side of life. "Szilvia Mucsy’s Best Regards evokes the old days when we used to select and buy postcards in order to send our written messages. Back then, we knew that the primary purpose of postcards was to transmit messages across space; from someone to someone else, from one place to another. Postcards were sold with the illustrated side ready-made, while the message on the other side was written by the sender and sent, usually openly—without an envelope—to the addressee. Unlike today’s instantaneity, it required a significant amount of time to get a message to its recipient. In her work evoking the world of postcards, Szilvia Mucsy presents text and image together, building on their interplay in each case: while the two could be interpreted independently, they also reciprocally interfere with one another. The moments captured in these photos belong to the silence of the world; the short, one-line texts accompanying them give direction to their interpretation. However, the texts do not limit the possibilities of interpretation, rather they mold them. It is a playful game of textual and visual narratives and their coequal status. The texts seem to be random fragments from intimate dialogues or monologues, lines taken from poems, or great wisdoms known for ages or discovered recently. The short statements, questions, or exclamations, sometimes lacking closing punctuation, are enigmatic enough on their own, and they seem to be reactions to events, situations, and sentences unknown to us. Hence, we can create imaginary (life) stories around them. Taken out of their original context, these sentences lose their specificity and gain a more universal character. The lines below the photographs seem to unlock new, hidden meanings, which may as well include our own stories. Many of us could choose a short message from here and send it as is to someone, this time by mail, instead of sending an emoji or texting them on their phone or via Messenger." - Gabriella Csizek Curator of Robert Capa Center Budapest