The Apples of Their Eyes

Does it matter if someone has grown up in a divorced family? Would their life be better if their parents stayed together despite every hardship? What kind of an imprint do the parents’ feelings and actions toward each other have on the spirit of ‘the apples of their eyes’’?

In Gábor Máté’s photographs, he unveil the children’s feelings regarding their parents’ marriage. He depicts the strange and complicated connection tensing between the actions of the parent and the character of their child. Our children’s prosperity, happiness, dreams and desires all hang on a thin thread woven by their family. If we look at our children as the future, then the key to that future lies in the hands of those who raise them. So that in Gábor Máté’s pictures, he grasps the future through the eyes of these young adults, and name the relationship of their parents as responsible for that future.

He created carefully arranged, but also spontaneous, detailed pictures based on interviews with his actors. He photographed symbolic scenes, locations and objects that refer to the problems learned during the interviews and the thoughts expressed. The process of image creation is important to Gábor Máté, so he perform’s all it’s phases himself, from exposing the 4×5 and 8×10 inch negatives through development to enlarging the large 80x100cm, 100x120cm images.