B&B connects Bristol and Budapest through zinemaking

Marton Gosztonyi’s B&B opens with the matter-of-fact statement: “Budapest is where I was brought up. Bristol is where my home is now. This book is dedicated to these two cities.”

In both the Budapest and the Bristol editions of the double zine, Marton’s awesome street photography and focus on the smaller details like street art, forgotten places and the mundane features of everyday life, help reveal both cities’ unique characters.

When and why did you start making zines?
I started making zines about two years ago during uni after we had lots of conversations about photo books and zines and I thought it seemed a really good way of presenting photographs. As soon as I started making my first zine I got hooked and since then I have been constantly making them.

What do you like about the medium?
I think one of the advantages of making zines is that it’s affordable and you can do everything yourself from the layout and putting it together, all the way to the publishing part of it. Using cheap materials and small printers allows you to make mistakes and therefore there is a lot of room to experiment. Also, I think the process of putting a zine together makes you think differently about a body of work and leads you to ideas and solutions that perhaps wouldn’t come to you otherwise. I think with photography you can say things in many different ways and bringing in some sort of order or narrative or just playing with the editing and design can add so much to a story.

What’s B&B all about?
B&B is about two cities, Bristol and Budapest. I grew up in Budapest and left about eight years ago and Bristol is where I live now, ‘old home, new home’. I am looking at everyday objects and things around me such as cars, houses and the streets. The photographs are taken in a spontaneous, instinctive way and for me the making of the zine is where it all starts to make sense.

When were the photos shot and how did you decide to present them together in this way?
I have been shooting in Bristol for the last few years and I went back to Budapest for two weeks to see what the outcome would be if I did the same thing there. This visit gave the whole project a new perspective and it felt natural to make it into a dialogue between the two cities using two separate volumes. During the process of making it I realised that the question of home and ‘homelessness is what links the two places for me, so B&B also refers to the transient nature of the Bed & Breakfast culture that I feel sometimes being a visiting person in both places.

What do you do for a living and how does zinemaking fit into your life?
This summer I graduated in Photography at UWE and at the moment I am looking for ways to make a living out of photography. In the meantime, zine making is a very important part of my working method, it allows me to be creative and bring new ideas to a project. Although the zine culture has had an amazing history already, it still feels really alive and fresh today and it is very exciting to see how it is growing and evolving.

Have you swapped B&B for any other good zines?
I have actually swapped a copy of B&B with Tommy Sussex for his Lviv photo zine, which is a lovely b&w edition about Lviv in Ukraine.

Find out more about B&B and Marton’s work.