I left JFK for Budapest on April 7th with fifteen rolls of film and the intention to not photograph Hungary’s pivotal election, in which autocrat Viktor Orbán and his regime of two decades was set to lose (they did!), but to see for myself how a generation raised with no memory of otherwise greets the moment when democracy comes knocking at their door.
The first days in Hungary were defined by espressos, quadrupling my step count, and becoming the master at saying Szia (hi). As luck would have it, I was staying near a center commemorating Hungarian photojournalist Robert Capa, and on my first evening there was an opening event.