04.23 | The Surreal World of Agora am Donaukanal

Now, picture this: sometime last year, when autumn was in its "one last yellow leaf and then enough already" phase, my eye landed on that art thing called Agora am Donaukanal, sitting proudly across from Schwedenplatz. "We're coming here to take photos one day!" I thought, with all the enthusiasm of a squirrel in an acorn forest. And yesterday was finally that day.

Since our last double-exposure adventures were about as successful as a laser pointer with a cat, I thought I'd give the creative energy of our ladies and gentlemen artists another boost. But while I was explaining my plans, a spark hit me: what if we made a comic strip? After all, they already have all the basic skills at their fingertips. With Snapseed they can create captions beautiful enough to make a calligrapher jealous, and building a collage is just the icing on the cake — or perhaps the pixel on the image.

Instead of our previous "slow and steady" principle, I decided that this time we should squeeze a process that normally takes five to eight hours into the three hours available to us. Yes, you read that correctly: invent the story, take the photographs and edit the whole thing — all while the clock keeps ticking.

We arrived at the location, where the team got roughly ten minutes to scan the surroundings like an eagle over the prairie and come up with a punchy story. The task wasn't easy: the story had to consist of exactly three photographs, which would later be assembled into a single image and completed with concise text before being presented to the public. The twist was that during those ten minutes they were not allowed to take a single photograph. The entire thing had to come together in their heads like a perfectly solved Rubik's Cube.

When the time was up, everyone enthusiastically — or in some cases absolutely terrified — shared their brilliant, or perhaps completely absurd, story. Some wanted a model, so the "we photograph each other because there are no other volunteers" section was saved for the end. Great ideas were flying around, and the surreal nature of the concepts managed to awaken the inner Dalí even in the gentlest artist.

Once everyone had created their three masterpieces, we returned to our headquarters at the Vienna Hungarian School, where the collage frenzy began. We immersed ourselves in the Moldiv app, experimenting so extensively with layouts, background colours and final image formats that even a Swiss watchmaker would have nodded in approval.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.