A:t:t:i:l:a's photostream

I was born in 1967 in Hodmezovasarhely, a 50,000-strong mainly agricultural/farming town in the South-East of Hungary, a 20 minutes drive NE from Szeged, a major university town.

Hodmezovasarhely has always had a handful of intellectuals who may have been provincial in some of their ways but who certainly kept their fingertips on the pulse of the world's events, and who had the ability to share their enthusiasm about this or that, be it language, Russian icons, the versatility and clarity of mathematical thinking, or music, old and new. My high school played a major role in who I am today.

I graduated from Szeged University as a secondary school teacher of English Language and History. In 1991 and 1992, I spent one year in Portland, Oregon as an exhange student at Portland State University, a formative year in all respects, including my adventure with photography.

After college, I found myself in freelance translation and interpreting. A career I envisage to pursue until the last working day of my life, it allows me to keep my all-encompassing interest alive in all things.

I live with my girlfriend Aniko and with her two daughters Dalma and Betti. I have recently put my hand on a Nikon D100 dSLR and hell broke lose. ;)

I will never become anything even close to a pro or even semi-pro photographer, but photography, especially in combination with writing notes to the images, allows me to reseach and hopefully understand certain cultural phenomena. I am a liberal thinker who wants to understand and enjoys understanding the world in its diversity but also I am old enought to know what I want, what I accept and what I don't. Nonetheless, photographing diverse aspects of our extremely complex world does help keep my eyes and brain open.

Areas of photography that interest me are street art as a phenomenon, textures in nature and man-made structures, and portraits. I am especially thrilled by high-quality (both technically/photographically and in human terms) portraiture of people from all over the world. I am always eager to learn more about places, people, and languages.

I am currently slowly exposing myself to Spanish with the hope that one day I can truly enjoy the amazingly rich culture it is a vehicle for.

I am more and more in love with music. I sing in an amateur a capella madrigal choir of 17 people, and while I can't listen to all the music I want, I certainly feel extatic and elevated when I hear even just a fragment of really good music -- Gould playing the Goldberg Variations, or Kennedy playing Vivaldi... I've had the chance to hear Pundit Ravi Shankar live in concert in Portland, OR in 1992, and I wish I could have heard Oum Khaltoum live...

My three heroes in music are Bach, Jimi Hendrix, and Bartok. This is not an order of importance or preference -- it is the order how I gradually understood their music, moving one slow step ahead at a time.

If I could only pick three spices to keep me happy for the rest of my life, it would be garlic and salt. I wouldn't need a third, but fresh green herbs are worth dying for any day.

Good food is my weakness. Genuine buffalo mozzarella is the sexiest simple food I can imagine. Consistency, texture, flavor...

While I decided not to teach in an institutional format for a career, I do enjoy sharing my knowledge and way of thinking with those around me physically (in the family and among friends) or virtually (in web-based communities). Actually, it is the best possible way to ensure that I can continue learning about the present and not just forget more and more about the past. ;))

A:t:t:i:l:a

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