Photos of the series “Formalities” start out from the point where rational thinking ends. Erdei’s major realization is that the world's beauty lies in the fact that it exists: existence is beautiful in its entire absurdity and imperfection. Her photos are natural in a way that they do not wish to explain the secret of existence, nor to define it from the outside, but rather to experience it fully, and create interpretations in the light of this experience. This femininely artistic identity in Erdei’s work takes the form of what could be called a “layer”, and starts dominating the photos as soon as the exposure is made. At this point the referentiality of space and time loses its significance; the place where you arrive looking at her photos contain the totality of the world, so you can just allow yourself to be touched by the locations, objects, and beings – ones referring to things other than themselves. At the same time, through your particularity and imperfection, you are also included this world of visuality. (Antal Jokesz)

The concepts of “inside” and “outside” are also cancelled in this strange semiotic game, and barriers between the living and the inanimate dissolve: living beings freeze to become inanimate things, while objects are animated. Through these absurd visions, human environment is juxtaposed to animated scenes, and nothing can be unfitting or dissonant in this world anymore.
All the phenomena that appear here—in this environment presumably dominated by humans—are contained in consumer society and its culture.
Consumer culture’s spaces and visuals enter one’s private realm through television, mass produced everyday objects and their images in the media. While becoming part of everyday life, these objects will be the mandatory formal attributes of everyday life, colorful little nothings inevitable from shaping and defining one’s inner world. Affecting your perception, and modifying your interpretations of reality, they turn into internal patterns, basic references to relate to when recognizing anything new. The titles specifying the date and place of taking these photos emphasize the global nature of this phenomenon: all these similar contexts co-exist in a variety of locations... and they could take place practically anywhere. (Virág Böröczfy)

Krisztina Erdei's work consists of very strong photos: troubling and exciting, like the collections of a fashion guru. We could say they present a new generation's visuals and their directives for reality, with a consoling vision that the culture of today, though it is clearly heading somewhere, remains full of unexpected relations, contingencies. The reality copied through Krisztina Erdei's camera is actual, not potential, and it forms a complex, heavily conditioned world employing both model realities and own experience. (József Készman)

Krisztina Erdei (born 1976) lives and works in Szeged, Hungary.

More about the project:
http://www.fotografus.hu/intro.php?f=47
http://www.photo.sittcomm.sk/erdei.htm