Vargyas Gábor: Istenek, ősök és sámánok (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2012)

• It doesn't matter whether there is wind, whether there is sunshine or rain? I am looking at the pictures - they are impressions of the landscape, of the nature and the people living in it. I am looking at the report - the report of Gábor Vargyas about Life, with a capital L. I have already seen this somewhere. Yes indeed, I am already rich of that experience, I might have lived this in one of my dreams, or maybe in one of the tales of my grandfather, telling stories about people who lived once upon a time and of course offering lessons to me, the child of these times, with the objective to help me understand why things are the way they are and why they are right. These are to remind me what the ancestors, my own ancestors did, how they lived, what they ate and drank, how they wept and laughed, how they fought with the elements, the daemons or each other. I was told to remember this if I wanted to stay alive; I was told to listen carefully and prepare myself to tell all this to my own children in due time. To tell the truth I did not really understand all this. But now, when I am looking at the pictures of Gábor Vargyas about the Bru, I am starting to get a hint. All these people we see on the pictures act in every way differently from what I was told, or what I have seen. However, everything appears to me quite familiar. All these people living in the mountains in houses built on pillars are really very much alike us. I can see their fight with the elements, their everyday struggle for food, their smart cooperation in order to keep safe of dangers, and as I look at the pictures, I have the feeling of being now able to understand how closely we have to cooperate, to rely on each other; we really have to divide the tasks among us, and we have to make the vital experiences memorable in order to ensure the survival of the common knowledge drawn from this cooperation, as a heritage for our descendants, to be used in the very way it helped us, so that it can also help our children in the future, help them to understand how they have to live and behave, how they can survive, what it looks like when we feel joy or fear, and how we can overcome our fears. So, there is nothing strange in these pictures, in fact, this is our life, lived by other people. And there is the rain. On these photos, we cannot see the rain, but still, we have the impression that it is impossible to understand these people without the rain, the way they are raising their children, how they help each other in a very cooperative way to ensure the food that is indispensable for the community, the way they are hunting, cutting wood, how they are struggling with all sorts of difficulties, with diseases, and they manage to make every temporary success memorable through rituals, to keep the experience alive and perhaps to help making life easier in the future. Although, I do not see the rain, but I can feel that it is there, really present, I can also feel the force that these people receive from their faith, and this faith is reflected on all their photos, and gives them power in their lives. Gábor Vargyas, the great magician - we could well call him a shaman - helps us understand the incomprehensible, to grasp the absurdity of human life and with the help of the Bru he tells us who we are. We are grateful to him for that. dr. Csaba Őry 3