”I had my two-month old daughter in my arms, I had no choice, but to recover.” She took pictures of the holiday houses of the 60s, of little girls and of Budapest as no one else. And of her own serious illness without taboos and clichés, by opening up. Last time she processed the stories of Holocaust survivors with embarrassing detail and a loud success. An interview with Ildi Hermann (strictly Ildi), photographer. Márton Neményi In your latest exhibition Portraits of Hungarian Holocaust survivors living in New York could be seen and their detailed stories could be read. Is there still anything new to say about the Holocaust? It seems like there is, but it was not my purpose to say anything new about the Holocaust, but to show stories with pictures and texts that we have not known so far. I have never received too much feedback on any of my exhibitions, and what else could be the measure of success if not the fact that complete strangers contact me and tell me their own stories and tell me how important it is for them what I do. This feels immensely good. The exhibition was closed with a discussion; a storm had just hit and 30 degrees dropped to 20 degrees Celsius, and still there was a full house. Everyone was active and interested, they asked a myriad of questions. An elderly gentleman, for example stood up and asked whether the subjects also tell their stories to others, or do they feel it important at all to speak about it, because he knows a certain Auntie Magda in Chicago. ”Wait a minute”, I said; ”I know one, too”! Of course we talked about the same person. Auntie Magda is the only survivor who may know anything about my grandmother who was also a survivor, but since he does not live in New York, unfortunately we cannot meet. Although I talked to her on the phone more times, but I did not find out much. She remembered my grandmother and a few little details; the apartment they lived in and what tram they used to travel on, but she could not answer a lot of my questions. Another elderly gentleman asked about one of the interviewees, Auntie Pipi, he called me that he read about the exhibition in the papers and he thought she was his relative. We met and talked and it turned out that she indeed was his relative. At that time you stated that what also drove you was that your grandmother had died before you could have asked her about what happened. So has it filled the void a little that you could talk to the survivors? It is strange. If there was no void in me, maybe the exhibition would not have been born while I knew that I could not fill it. Still, it is a good feeling: I have done something. All these stories may have given me something that moved me forward, it did not make me feel like I have missed something. Personal connection is always important for you: once you process your own illness, another time your relationship with your daughter. Can you create by keeping a distance from the subject? I could, for example my works about the holiday houses or about Budapest were not built on personal memories. I made my series on my illness ten years ago, since then all my topics have been very close to me. Ten years ago for two summers you took photos of life scenes about holidaymakers that is about the holiday houses and the holidaymakers. How were you received? There is a catalogue from ’65 with beautiful graphics, holiday house designs that were created by top architects. At that time the way it worked was that everyone bought the design drawings they wanted and built the house for themselves. I wanted to find the houses in the catalogue, but there is no list or recording about the built houses. So off I went to the Island of Szentendre Island and when I saw an interesting holiday house, I buzzed the bell. However, there were very few left from the catalogue and it was difficult to find them so I started to take photos of other houses from the same era along with the people. Did they understand what you wanted? Not always. I took photos in two summers, in 2006 and 2007, mostly on the Island of Szentendre. By the end of the first summer they by and large knew who I was, the rumour spread that there is this completely crazy woman walking around here who is taking photos of the houses. A lot of people did not let me in, which I understand, of course. However, ten years ago there was not such a paranoid suspicion around photographers as now, people’s first thought was not that the photos would be misused. The did not say that If I did not get out they would call the police, but they said I should understand that they did not know me, and whether I was really the person I introduced myself to be, but maybe I was not. Such things even happened when I really just wanted to take photos of the house and not them. There was a point when I burst out crying. Although you must accept these cases and that is it – the photography project finally took off, came together and became successful. Now, related to the New York series I was asked whether there was anyone who did not want to do it. Not many, but there were one or two people and this time I did not want to convince anyone. If they do not want it, I will not force it. This only made sense if subjects wanted to talk. When did you start taking photos? My first photography experience was at the age of 17 at the summer camp of the Ghost Image Free School. But why did I go there…? I was probably simply bored and I needed some program for the summer. I am sorry, but there is no romantic line in this story at all that ”I got the first Pajtás camera from my father at this and that age and I immediately felt that this would be my life…”. Nobody in my family has anything to do with photography, but not to any other arts either. But the Ghost Picture camp was incredibly great. I got the feel for it. After that during college I was deliberately looking for photo courses that was how I got to Gabi Csoszó, who dreamt of a very well-functioning photo school and she has operated it ever since. It was quite important one and a half or two years. After the college I had to do something with myself. I went to a teacher training college not to become a teacher, but to learn Hungarian. I never felt confident enough to teach so I moved towards photography: I started doing reports for 168 Hours and a little bit for Hungarian Orange. Then Miklós Déri, photographer invited me to the Prime Minister’s Office. I took photos of Gyurcsány and his people for one and a half years, it was interesting and not the worst for experience either, but I still left it. I had enough of politics. I have been a freelancer ever since. Didn’t you want to build an art project on the Prime Minister at that time? Barna Burger who died this year managed to pull up half a lifetime of work on the current one. I did not have such ambitions. Moreover, I knew that I would not spend half a life there, plus at that time I was granted the József Pécsi Photography Grant from which in the first two years I made the ”Weekend” and in the last year I documented my illness, form which my ”NHL” (Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, malignant lymphatic tumour – the Editor’s note) series was born. In what stage were you diagnosed? If I remember well, it was early. After my daughter was born, I started coughing. For a while it was ok that I coughed here and there and I was not even bothered that it did not go away: I did not have fever, I did not feel I had the flu and my attention was not there anyways. I did not even care that I sweated a lot at night – I thought after giving birth there could be a thousand reasons for that. After a while, when the cough still did not go away, I felt that something was not right. I started to go to doctors, but most of them said that it must be because of giving birth and anyways I had postpartum depression. However, I knew that I was not depressed and that it was not at all ok that I had been coughing for one and a half months. I just wanted to someone to tell me what was wrong. At that time I was constantly going to doctors between two breastfeeding sessions.