Awakening — The New Beginning

In my own words

What happens to a person’s body and self-image after serious illness?

The project closest to my heart, and the hardest one to talk about without a lump in my throat. Women living after gynaecological cancer, photographed with their scars — not as wounds, but as proof of survival.

We worked with Dr. Magdolna Dank's oncology team and with the psychiatrist Imre Csernus, because this could never be only about pictures. For many of the women, standing in front of the camera was the first time they had really looked at their own body since the surgery. One of them called it a farewell to the past and a bow to the future. I have never forgotten that sentence.

Since 2018 the photographs hang permanently in the Oncology Centre in Veszprém, where people waiting for treatment see them every day. That means more to me than any prize I could ever be given.

Fine-art nude photography in this series is not nudity for its own sake: it is a documented artistic study of the body, scars, self-image and recovery. Awakening is therefore the central archival chapter for this strand of the BANHALMI ART oeuvre. A later related work is Touch Vienna & Touch Munich — body, touch and intimacy.

Awakening — video documentation

Fine-art nude photography · where this strand began

After Awakening, I no longer looked at the human body in the same way

I had photographed nudes before Awakening, but this project changed what I was looking for. The women who stood in front of my camera after gynaecological cancer were not there simply to make “beautiful nude photographs”. They were trying to find their way back to their bodies, their scars and the person who was still there after illness — changed, but not erased.

That is when I understood that, for me, fine-art nude photography is not about nudity. A back, a hand, a movement or a narrow strip of light can be enough. I look for the energy that is furthest inside. I always look for beauty — not a flawless body, but what makes a person unmistakably themselves.

In the curatorial chronology, Awakening is the central work of Period III · 2017–2018 — The body after change. This is where artistic nude photography became a distinct strand of my work, followed by essays, interviews, personal accounts and later projects.

The story became a book

In 2017 the photographs and the participants’ stories became a book. Awakening — The New Beginning! (ISBN 978-963-12-8663-2) preserves the stories of twelve women. The photographs are not left alone: the people in them keep their own voices and memories beside the images.

When the photographs returned to a place where they acquired another meaning

After Budapest and Noszvaj, the project reached Veszprém. Since 2018 the photographs have had a permanent home at the Oncology Centre of Csolnoky Ferenc Hospital, documented at the time by VEOL.

For me that matters more than leaving the work only on a gallery wall. Here the images are seen by people for whom bodily change, fear and beginning again are not abstract ideas.

Taking the clothes off is not always the hardest part

Over the following years many stories grew around this subject. One of the strongest is My First and Last Nude Photo Shoot — Taking My Clothes Off Wasn't the Hard Part. Another, The Psychology of Artistic Nude Photography, explains why I believe a strong nude series is more about psychology than equipment.

“It is an enormous honour when someone chooses a photographer and places that kind of trust in them.”

Ten stories, ten different ways into the same subject

• The Gift
• Discovering the Woman Within Myself
• 60 Minutes
• I Wanted Raw, Honest Photographs…
• The Psychology of Artistic Nude Photography
• My First and Last Nude Photo Shoot
• If I Could, I'd Prescribe It…
• BDSM — Everyone Has Their Own Version of Normal
• From Pole Dancer to Leatherworker
• Light Without Limits

All fine-art nude photography stories →

How I work today

The aim is still not simply to “make a nude photograph”. I want to create an image a person could live with on their own wall: honest, visually complete, able to make someone stop and think. Sometimes that needs the whole body; sometimes a hand, a back, a gesture or a trace of light is enough.

Selection and finishing are part of the collaboration. Only chosen photographs receive final retouching. Selection can happen during the session, with individual photographs already worked on there, or later through a closed cloud gallery. Publication is never automatic; with images this personal, discretion and explicit consent come first.

Current references, private commissions and the present Fine Art workflow are kept on the separate Professional site. Client reviews there document the experience of working together; numeric rating claims are used only when the current source can be verified.

Fine-art nude references and current commissions →

Archive record

Exhibition documentation

• Years: 2017–2018
• Locations / status: Budapest · Noszvaj · Veszprém
• Digitised works: 18 photographs in the archive
• Related documentation: press and media sources are linked on this page
• Related book: Awakening — The New Beginning

The next chapter

From Awakening to Touch

After Awakening, the artistic study of the body continued in a different direction. The 2024 Touch Vienna & Touch Munich examines touch, intimacy and tantra massage through the same underlying question: how can the body be photographed without turning the person into an object?

Watch the exhibition film

Awakening — exhibition and book launch

Watch the exhibition film on YouTube

Press & media

• Video report
• Exhibition opening
• The beginnings
• Poems
• Behind the scenes
• Feature article
• Feature article 2
• Feature article 3
• Interview
• Video report 2
• Press coverage
• Feature article 4

Artistic nude — related projects

• Touch Vienna & Touch Munich
• The Men’s Dream