Dénes P. Szabó
Overcoming Passions
CONFESSION
Zoltán Tombor openly shares, through images, his former struggles with alcohol and drug addiction in his new exhibition — but the show also explores the complexity and psychological depths of addiction itself.
A pile of psychoactive drugs, a dog barking from behind bars, a scar-covered arm, and the leg of a woman in black latex greet visitors at Zoltán Tombor's exhibition Lost & Found, which explores the theme of addiction through symbolic photographs. Yet the exhibition at the Capa Center is also a personal confession: Tombor recounts his decades-long battle with alcohol and substance abuse. Alongside the photographs, visitors can also read the artist's reflections and quotes from self-help books — for example, from Gábor Maté's In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.
"I've been a weekend drinker since I was eighteen, and that lasted until I was about thirty. Then I moved to Milan, where I worked as a fashion photographer. By that point, I was drinking regularly — every evening I'd open a bottle of wine or drink two or three beers — and by the end of my stay there, I had tried drugs as well," the photographer told our paper.
From 2011, he worked in New York, and a few years later he signed with a London photo agency. Constant travel led him to drink ten to twelve coffees a day and rely on sleeping pills to cope with jet lag–induced insomnia — for which he often drank at night. "This lifestyle went on for about three years, then my whole body started hurting, I became increasingly exhausted and irritable, and I felt I was no longer in shape," said Tombor, who decided in 2018 to give up his destructive habits. In 2019, he and his wife, model Nelli Tombor, moved back to Hungary.
This exhibition tells that story — not chronologically, but grouped by themes. Still, as one moves through the photographs, a narrative emerges, starting with images from Tombor's childhood and moving into various forms of dependency: smoking, alcoholism, addictions caused by psychoactive substances, and different forms of sexual addiction. The symbolic images connect associatively — in the section on drugs, for example, there are countless pills, a barking dog (a metaphor for a soul that has lost control), a woman dressed as Pinocchio (embodying deceit), and the artist himself, with only his face visible above the soil. "Addiction is a constant battle with yourself, characterized both by craving and ecstasy," says Tombor.
The exhibition also evokes the years Tombor spent in America and, with that, another addiction: workaholism. "It's a particular trait of New York that people are measured primarily by achievement and success — very few are genuinely interested in you as a person, or in your story. Performance comes first; everything else is irrelevant in that community. But the moment your personal choices start affecting your work, the system spits you out. The American Dream is an illusion, because there's always another goal that convinces you that once you reach it, you'll finally be enough. That hamster wheel eventually chewed me up," says Tombor.
Toward the end of the exhibition, the images turn toward recovery — faith and sobriety. The photos show a rising sun, grass sprouting through cracked concrete, a shed snakeskin, and the artist himself, arms spread wide, floating in the sea, basking in sunlight — as if he has finally reached the end of a long, obstacle-filled journey toward purification.
Info
Zoltán Tombor – Lost & Found
Curator: Emese Mucsi
Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center
Budapest, 6th District, Nagymező Street 8
On view until January 18
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