Without a Filter – The Story of My Body | Andi

It was February 2014. Winter in Budapest, and I could not see a way out. I had just earned my degree, yet nobody would give me a job. My family was proud of everything I had achieved, but I did not feel successful.

Until then I had known only platonic love. I weighed 121 kilos and was convinced nobody would ever want me and that I would never get married.

By May I had fallen into a deep depression. My hair was dark, just like my mood, and I only got out of bed when I absolutely had to.

Then one day something changed.

An opportunity appeared in the form of a job — on the other side of the world.

A family in New York was looking for an au pair.

My short black hair and my 121 kilos did not bother the couple who hired me to help care for their four children.

The world became light again, although I still had no idea how much brighter it was about to become.

By November 2014, I was walking the streets of Manhattan.

Unbelievable, I thought.

People often say that real change must happen in small steps if you want lasting results.

I thought differently.

Sometimes you have to push off hard and make a huge jump — even into the unknown.

The months passed.

My hair began growing again and gradually becoming lighter, just like everything around me.

I was happy.

Every new experience delighted me like a child beneath a Christmas tree.

One year after moving abroad, I was offered the opportunity to take part in a professional photo shoot.

Before that, I would never have imagined agreeing to such a thing.

Me — someone who hated being photographed because I never saw myself as beautiful.

And yet professional photographs were made.

For the first time I felt that something inside me had begun to change too.

I felt like a woman.

I felt beautiful.

Even though I was still that shy girl who had one day made a huge decision and set off into the world.

I was incredibly proud of the photographs because they showed me the woman I wanted to become.

But something was still missing.

Validation from a man I myself could look at and think: yes, that's a real man.

Friends, relatives and family could tell me I was beautiful, but that felt completely different from seeing myself as attractive through a man's eyes and hearing the compliment from him.

I never received that validation.

Not until the summer of 2016.

By then I had been living abroad for a year and a half. The two-year contract I had signed was slowly approaching its end, and unless I found a husband or somebody offered to pay for college, I would soon have to return to Hungary.

I was not the only nanny in the household, so I was surprised when my colleague announced, six months before my own contract ended, that she was leaving.

The family and I had become very close, so we sat down to discuss what would happen next.

Naturally, they offered to pay for my studies.

I asked for a little time to think.

In reality, there was nothing to think about. A year and a half earlier, that had been my dream.

But there was one complication.

A Man had appeared in my life.

I think almost everyone has had a platonic love.

I certainly had.

One day, completely out of nowhere, he sent me a message:

“You're a hot woman.”

I could hardly believe it.

Suddenly all I could think about was whether to stay or return home.

Luckily, he had more sense than I did and persuaded me to stay.

That was the first time I truly felt like a Woman.

The way I should have felt long before.

Of course I did not hide my feelings when we began talking.

I put my cards on the table.

If I feel something or think something, I say it.

Has that caused problems in my life?

Plenty.

I still believe honesty is worth it.

Let's call this platonic love the Rescuer.

I had waited a long time to hear the words “you're a hot woman”, and life was strange enough to let me hear them from my very first “love”.

We are still very close today. Whenever possible, we talk — and not only about superficial things.

In November 2016, I came across an old photograph on my phone from about five years earlier.

I happened to be standing in front of a mirror.

I looked at the image, then at myself.

Something was wrong.

I looked at the mirror again, then the photograph.

What is different?

My face.

My body.

What happened?

I took a deep breath.

I was slimmer.

Much slimmer.

I was shocked.

After two years, this was the first time I had truly noticed the change in myself.

Out of curiosity, I bought a scale.

I was 22 kilos lighter.

Proudly, I showed that achievement to the world too.

Another milestone on my path toward becoming the woman I wanted to be.

Because of my visa, I spent Christmas and New Year's Eve 2016 in Hungary.

I met family, friends and my “Rescuer”.

And, miraculously, everybody noticed the change.

I had always been cheerful and smiling, but this new woman had gained something else as well:

Confidence.

And she was no longer afraid to show it.

I returned to the United States in January 2017 and started college.

The “husband hunt” began too, with limited success.

Because something was still missing.

The Rescuer was on the other side of the world, in Hungary.

On 18 July 2017, everything changed.

I was already 30 kilos below my original weight. My previously pink hair had become blonde.

After work, I put on makeup, slipped into my new red mini dress and high heels, and stood in front of the full-length mirror.

I lost my breath.

The WOMAN standing in front of me was the one I had dreamed of becoming when I was eighteen.

Blonde hair.

A slimmer but still curvy body.

Expressive eyes.

The mirror of my soul.

And it reflected exactly what I wanted to see:

A confident, sexy woman.

I burst into tears.

My makeup ran, but she was still there — the blonde bombshell.

I redid my makeup, took a photograph and uploaded it to social media.

Likes and hearts flooded in, together with admiring comments — including from men I would never have dared to dream about.

The summer of 2017 was a whirlwind full of adventures.

I revelled in the feeling that I was an attractive woman who could have almost anyone she wanted.

In October 2017, another professional photo series was made.

This time the subject was the confident woman whose sexuality was unmistakable.

I uploaded the new photographs to dating sites.

The reaction was immediate.

By December 2017 I had gathered a substantial fan base.

Dating platforms have traps — but they also create possibilities.

Whenever I receive a message, I look at the man's photograph first.

I'm the one who scores people.

Based on his pictures, I gave the “Wizard” a six out of ten.

But his words were compelling.

We exchanged messages for days, and eventually he received my phone number.

The next evening we were talking on the phone.

I remember the end of that first conversation clearly.

“What do you think of me?” he asked.

I smiled toward my window.

“You're funny and good-looking. What do you think of me?” I asked.

I waited.

“Do you know that full-length photograph where you're walking? You're wearing short denim shorts and black boots. I see a confident, beautiful woman who has conquered the world.”

He said it seriously.

I stopped breathing for a moment.

He enchanted my heart because he genuinely saw the Woman in me — the woman I felt myself to be.

We met, talked for a long time and spent the night together.

But the Wizard was not the kind of man who could be satisfied with one woman, even though he always said — and still says:

“If I had a girlfriend, she would be like you.”

Recovering from his spell was difficult.

It took almost three months.

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Even today it is not always easy when he calls and tries to seduce me again.

But now I know who I am and what I am worth.

I am the WOMAN I always wanted to become.

And I do not owe that to the Rescuer or the Wizard.

I owe it to New York, where I was reborn and built a new world from my dreams.

And the fact that I can see myself as beautiful — I owe that to Norbi, because he saw something in me that I could not yet see myself.

Art photography is a sensitive creative process in which the body, personality and authentic self all have space to emerge.

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.