Frida: Duda Éva Társulat x Budapesti Operettszínház
Átrium, Budapest
There’s a kind of pressure that lives specifically in stage photography. Not the technical kind, though that’s real too. It’s the pressure of knowing that nothing on that stage will happen twice.
I shot this production for Duda Éva Társulat and the Budapesti Operettszínház while working as a photojournalist for MTI. The show ran at Átrium Film-Színház in Budapest and brought together dance, music and physical theatre to tell the story of Frida Kahlo’s life. The cast included Gryllus Dorka and Gubik Petra sharing the role of Frida, with Molnár Áron, Papadimitriu Athina, Kálid Artúr and the dancers of Duda Éva Társulat.
As a theatre photographer you’re working in conditions that aren’t designed for you. The lighting is built for an audience 30 metres away. The action moves fast and positions don’t hold. You’re not there to direct anything. You’re there to find what’s already happening and be quick enough to get it.
What I kept returning to was the physical language of the production. Bodies used as arguments. Frida flat on a tilted surface, ankles bare, looking like a painting that had started breathing again. Leaves falling while a figure throws her arms wide, like she’s trying to hold on to something already gone. The whole ensemble moving in skull-painted masks and flower crowns, the kind of image you don’t need to understand the language to feel.
This is why photojournalism and theatre photography share so much DNA. In both, you’re a witness. The story doesn’t need you to tell it. It just needs you to be in the right place and not blink.
Thinking about
a Production Shoot?
Hi, I’m Eszter, a theatre and event photographer based in Bristol, originally from Hungary. Before wedding and commercial work, I spent years as a photojournalist, which means working fast in available light without disrupting what’s happening around me is something I’ve been doing for a long time.
Productions, performances, live events. If you need stills that show what the work actually feels like rather than what it looks like posed against a backdrop, that’s the work I do.
You don’t need a shot list and also don’t need to brief me on every scene.You just need someone in the room who knows when to press the shutter. I’ll handle the rest.
If you’re putting together a show and need a photographer for press or archive imagery, get in touch and tell me what you’re working on.
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