Images of Tradition
Ferenc Cservenka (Budapest), with an introduction by Mihály Hoppál (Budapest)

When, as a young ethnographer, I first arrived in Szék (Sic, Romania) in the early 1970s in the course of several short field trips to various points in Transylvania (Erdély, more precisely, the Székelyföld), I was overcome by the strange feeling that the world of my textbooks was coming to life before my very eyes. What I had read in the classical ethnographic descriptions was still very much a living tradition there.
The town of Szék, hidden among the hills near Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), revealed an old-new world to visitors from Budapest. This was a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when you could once again travel to Transylvania without restrictions. The stranger from afar was received with distinct hospitality, and a wondrous openness and warm-heartedness in almost every house. Both the lovely women wrapped in embroidered shawls and the men in yellow straw hats greeted the stranger in the street as if they had been old acquaintances.

Women exchanging the latest gossip before church services. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

And indeed, there was some sort of link between these villagers and the city-dwellers who had undertaken the long trip there, something other than the Hungarian language, something they never talked about: they shared a common project. While the city-dwellers busied themselves with the conscious preservation of folk traditions, the villagers were transmitting these traditions instinctively.

Older men sitting by the church wall. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

The young folk music scholars made audio recordings, the filmmaker brothers shot folk customs with a simple movie camera, others learned the folk dances, and the folklorist recorded popular superstitions and local legends with his cumbersome tape recorder. Long conversations were captured this way, and the songs of István Serestély, that magnificent singer, were immortalized in the crystal-clear tones of the archaic style of singing. His commentaries also shed light on certain elements of the traditional way of life. Later, we had the opportunity to enjoy the hospitality of his family when we returned with photographer Ferenc Cservenka on several occasions. The two of us accompanied the people to church, to the Easter services and to the service on St. Bartholomew's Day. We admired the great variety of local peasant wear, and the vivid colors of their embroidery. On one occasion, for example, we witnessed women in preparation for a funeral painstakingly selecting shawls with the right colors of embroidered flowers, carefully avoiding the striking color combinations.

The táncház was a special institution in this village. It was an occasion for young people to meet and dance and gave the young men an opportunity to woo the young women. It facilitated the process of choosing a partner and provided a forum for boys and girls to socialize. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

The táncház, a small dance hall, completely enthralled young researchers who visited it for the first time. It was there that one could really come to understand what it meant for young people to gather together to dance and sing, and simply enjoy themselves, and for young men to woo the young lasses. The táncház provided an excellent opportunity for young men to demonstrate their virility and strength as they competed to showed off their excellence at dancing, and a chance for the young women to test and prove their virtue. The táncház was where young people could learn the traditional norms of behavior, and prove that they could adhere to these norms; and at the same time, it provided an opportunity to give vent to the passions of youth. In brief, it was the place to learn how to be an adult, a place where one underwent a sort of protracted rite of passage.

In the 1970s, everyone was still dressed in traditional peasant wear, and this also held true for the children. This little boy is observing the girls' singing game. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

In much the same way, the visit to Szék was a rite of passage for the young ethnographer that I then was, an initiation to real ethnographic field work. And when I wandered through the streets of the village together with a photographer friend of mine, and attended a funeral as well as other church services in this Calvinist village, the narrative material gathered gained a visual dimension. The photographs by Ferenc Cservenka are among the finest pieces of Hungarian ethnophotography, and, together with the photos of Péter Korniss, László Kunkovács, and Béla Kása, introduced a new style of ethnographic photography in those years of the "ethnophotographic movement". The main point was to combine documentary authenticity with aestheticism of composition and intensity of imaging. It was these together which made their photos not just good, but beautiful.

"Bújj, bújj, zöld ág..." (Slip through, burst forth, little green branch...), an ancient children's game, often played by adolescent girls. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

The socio-political changes of recent years have changed things in Szék, too. This is made abundantly clear by the new, two-story houses recently built by some families. Peasant wear, with its uniform beauty, has disappeared: first the men, then gradually the women, and now even the young girls have abandoned these links to the past. The old customs, too, are on their way out: weddings are becoming more ceremonious, and are gradually turning into large-scale social events.
"Christenings" to celebrate the birth of babies have lately taken the form of something akin to small weddings. But funerals still bring together all the relatives in collective mourning, and even the particular part of the village where the deceased had lived. The most striking change in custom is what has happened to the táncház: instead of the separate dances formerly organized in the different parts of the village, today it is the disco in the village center that has become the meeting place for young people.

Portrait of a woman. Photo: Ferenc Cservenka

Thus, the pictures presented here, photographs of poetic beauty taken by Ferenc Cservenka in the 1970s, are historical documents now, capturing scenes and moments that will never again be. The recorded gestures, the folk wear, the shawls, and the dance movements are parts of the heritage of the rural past. They are cultural treasures worthy of being preserved.