You just cannot believe your ears now if this is the first time you have heard the stories of the ‘old days’ of Sziget. If you happened to be there, you sigh for days gone by. Ákos Hegedűs/morpho’s first photo album records the stories of the starting years of Sziget festival from minor personal memories to the mass of people flowing in front of the main stage. This black and white photo album was the first one on the Sziget festival: showing the first period of its history from the early vague steps to the development of a megafestival. As the authors of the book were reporting for daily papers those days, they were spending each and every day of the festival on the spot. They seemed to live together with the very moments of the organizers, the performers and the audience. Those moments create the main body of the book. That kind of photo album had barely been published in Hungary before, in which the festival – both from the audience’s and the performers’ point of view – is shown in its natural details. So many stars in such a short period of time had not turned up in Hungary before those years, so GNL was munching on the interviews. He was a having a conversation among others with Slash, David Bowie, John Cale, Paul Kartner, Peter Hammill, Patti Smith and Coolio. The first years of Sziget festival were much more exciting and interesting for the authors than today’s multiculti megafest.

Hella Szerepi