Istvan Balogh’s photographic work is set under the aegis of doubt, like an attitude of suspense. The precision of his shots situates his works beyond the visible, in a perpetual quest for meaning. The Cechov series consists of seven photographs revealing forms of human behavior within an office team. In a suspended world, where employees seek the very meaning of their acts, Istvan Balogh invites us to create a crisis over values,

looking for the motivations they mask. As a unified aesthetic conjuring up models of corporate communications, the set is a copy of the bureaucratic world, reduced to essentials, in a colourless, tenuous and structured organization.

Within the offices, the employees in the straitjacket of their functions and their respective hierarchic statuses, evolve between innerness and collectivity. The people trapped within

an authoritarian and computerized structure let their individuality slip away for a moment. And this is the moment chosen by the artist. Wearing impeccable suits, be they men or women, expectation can be read in their postures and ideas. The images assume meaning in the positioning of the bodies and the indeterminate attitudes of each one of them. The physical shows through the mental. The relational crack is sketched out for as long as a movement takes.

(Extract) Estelle Gaultie