Men on motorbikes in Tehran, crowded restaurants in Tokyo, protesters in bloody shirts in Paris - three typical images from the exhibition of Dániel Havasi's photographs on the first floor gallery of the Aula   at Széchenyi István University in Győr. At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Réka Orosz-Barczi, Head of the Centre for International Programmes at the University, pointed out that an album of the photographer's work, entitled Alulnézet (Bottom Up View), edited by photographer Örs Harnóczy, was also published, with images inspired by two-way migration in 21 countries around the world.

The exhibition highlights thirty of the images included in this volume, showing nine countries from Japan to the United States and Morocco. As the artist comments, the works are not the result of a specific project, but the product of several journeys between 2011 and 2020. "My last major trip took place during the first, ascending phase of the coronavirus epidemic. After that, also because of the restrictions, I felt that it was not the time for further travel, but for summing up," said Havasi, explaining the idea behind the album and the exhibition. Explaining the title Bottom Up View, he said that his photographs do not always depict happy people and places, and that he was not driven by the idea of making people travel.

Photographer Dániel Havasi (photo by Csaba József Májer)

The photographer believed that the theme of migration could provide a framework for the many photographs, as long as we are aware of the opinion he heard from a friend in Warsaw in 2018: others are well aware of it, while we often tend to forget that, compared to other continents, Europe is still the best place to live. "Let's hope this will continue to be the case," he added. It is with this in mind that two particularly timeless photos taken during the 2015 refugee crisis on the Serbian-Hungarian border were placed on the walls, but several others were inspired by this issue. "One particularly interesting country in this respect is Morocco, where tens of thousands of Western Europeans have settled on the coast, living in closed colonies on the ocean shore. So it is both a country of reception and a country of emission," said Mr Havasi, mentioning an interesting aspect.

The exhibition is on display until the end of June.

The opening of the exhibition was well attended (Photo by József Csaba Májer)