Winter is Coming

LFI: Please tell us about your project.
Zalán Ilyés: It is a series of images that is separated in space and time. Different people, different places, yet facing the same difficulty: solitude. When you reach a certain age, life slows down, the days become long and empty. Illness, poverty makes these moments even harder for them. Perhaps the best way to express what this material is about is what one elderly person said to me: “Suddenly life has become so long that there is no one I ever knew left. Endless suffering and loneliness is all I have left.”

How and where did you find your protagonists?
They are the people who live around us: the neighbours we never see; in big cities, on farms, in the countryside. They are everywhere, yet we never see them. When I started this series, I got into it by accident. By chance, I met a caregiver who was bringing hot lunches from the kitchen of a local orphanage to some elderly people. It didn't take much to find myself a few minutes later in the back of a rickety car. A small path led the way to the house we went to. The room was quiet when we entered: a white-haired woman sat on the bed in front of photographs of her children and relatives. Her eyes lit up when she saw us and she greeted us with a smile on her face. It wasn't the food that made her happy, it was us. Although she had never seen me before, she welcomed me with deep affection and began to tell me stories. When we were about to leave, she looked at me and said, “Thank you for visiting. You are the first person this month to visit me, except for the woman who brings the food. You're welcome to visit me anytime.” She was 86 years old at the time. That's when I realised that I wanted to do something on this topic.

What does “winter is coming” mean for these people?
It means that for them the end is in the near distance, but they don't know when it will come, or how much longer they will have to wait. This lonely, sickly time of waiting is the last part of their lives. The series is an ode to the loneliness of old age, telling the story of the final days of a long and tiring journey, the last battles to be fought. All of this is compounded by poverty, so that some people, instead of a peaceful idyllic retirement, are faced with what is best summed up in the words of a kindly elderly man: “This month I've been wondering which would be better: being hungry, cold or buying pills.”