Ferenc Kálmándy, a photo artist from the underground milieu in Pécs, was prompted by the Budapest underground rock band Trabant to shoot a photographic series entitled “Too Late to Run Away, Shameful to Stay” in 1982. The composition, which consists of six pictures, captures visually the paradoxical scenery of movement posed by János Vető’s rhymes. The slow, hesitating movement of objects (in reality, people) set on the scene and the halting movement of bodies suggest the absolute futility of the paradox occurrence symbolized in the song or, perhaps, any occurrence, so it represents the rule of melancholic spleen typical of the oeuvre of Trabant. Both running away and staying are reduced to a series of actions which suggests hollowness and superfluity: the blurred movement of the body and human figures symbolize this state and a meaning of life associated with it.

This work reveals Kálmándy’s desire to link his work to contemporary photo art genres and underground cultural scenes. The figures in the photograph are director of cartoons Károly Papp (who at the time worked together with Ferenc Kálmándy for the Gallery of Pécs) and architect János Rauschenberger. Rauschenberger also worked as a stage designer, and he served as the editor of the periodical Bercsényi 28-30 between 1978 and 1980. The journal was the theoretical forum of the Bercsényi Architecture College of the Budapest University of Technology between 1963 and 1988. Alongside articles on architecture, it also published writings on underground music and arts. Its previous issues are available at bercsényi2830.hu.