Nagybani – Where the nights are days | 2014


Trade - over 400 thousand tons, trucks - up to 150 a year, manufacturers – more than 185 thousand

30-40 percent of the Hungarian fruit and vegetable trade is performed in this market, but many imported goods are bought up here as well. The market opened its gates in 1990, taking the market at Bosnyák square – that was considered to be outworn at that time – over. Its territory has tripled since then to 33 hectares and it provides stalls for 1200 manufacturers.


Some of the manufacturers come from the region of Alföld in the afternoons to be ready to welcome both their occasional and regular customers in the evening. The manufacturers usually travel once or twice a week to the capital city, but some of them spend each and every evening at the market. Those, who sell their goods on the same row, often know each other as they have a weekly contact, therefore they keep each other company when there are no customers. However, most of them prepare for the journey home by having a nap, knowing that a serious customer would wake them either way.


The buying and selling lasts until five o’clock in the morning, then the manufacturers drive home to continue working on their fields. Most of them cultivate just a few-hectare-territory and are trying to make a living by offering the best quality goods for the cheapest price to the retailers and traders. However, most of them are so embittered that they would give up farming, but they are aware of the fact that it is even more difficult to find a new job over the age of fifty.

 Nagybani market is like a small town at night, where the people are struggling with the cold and weariness. However their real enemies are the huge invisible companies who are always depreciating their prices at the expense of the quality.


This series won the 2nd prize in Portrait Series category at the Hungarian Press Photo Competition in 2014. 

Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
Balint Hirling, The Nagybani info
’It’s not the quality that counts, but how it looks. Everyone does his best to have more beautiful goods, because this is the key to sell them for more, even if the taste is worse.’ info
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