I have started to contribute to Google Maps about two and half years ago. A friend of mine had shown me a picture of his own on Google Maps which already had more than 15.000 views. Picture of “Kós Károly square” was quite good, and it was so fascinating for me to see how many people have already seen this photo (today I have a photo above 500.000 viewes, and some above 200.000)
I was so much excited of this fact, that I have started to share my photos already taken before, for which I thought: these are good photos. It took me time while I have found out that my most beloved places are statues and old buildings. I am also big fan of good food and drink, places where you can enjoy your stay, but the real passion came with exploring so much forgotten statues, or buildings which has long history. And besides that, it is no longer just a photo, but also a story, a review.
As time passed by, I have started to write stories of my “discoveries”, where I learnt and wrote about its history, about sculptor (builder) and I wanted to share this knowledge with others. Photo and story together are real challenge and real passion.
Just for curiosity some of interesting discoveries:
-Statue of actor Béla Lugosi - “guerilla sculptors”
Béla Lugosi was an actor who made the role of Dracula famous. Ha was Transylvanian origin (where Vlad Dracula also lived), and moved to Hollywood to “try his luck”, as many others. The real interesting in this sculpture is that it is so called guerilla-statue: german sculptor Hartmut Zech smuggled the sculpture on his place during a night of July 2003. Before I have discovered this sculpture I had not even known of so called “guerilla-statues”. You can imagine how surprised were the workers of “Agricultural museum” (where the statue was placed) when they discovered that something happened during the night. Fortunately the statue has not been removed, and later on was granted “survival permit”.
-Kolodko in Budapest - Mihail Kolodko is from Ukrainian city of Uzhorod (Ungvár in Hungarian), where he started his art with mini-statues. His view of modern art: “those times have passed since the creation of a statue was centrally defined, and public space shall be left for the interest of artists and people too.” Since he moved his residence to Budapest, he started to put his mini statues on many points of city, and these statues became very popular among the inhabitants and tourists too. Some examples: checkered-ear rabbit (Kockásfülű nyúl), who was a cartoon hero; Dead squirrel; “Mekk Elek” handyman; “Sad tank” ministatue,…his statues become so popular among people, that they even started to dress them.
This time I put here the picture of “Dead squirrel”, which statue is also known as: “Ars longa vita brevis”.
