joie/de vivre/ an exhibition of photos by Eniko Meszaros

Photos of people and places during the Edinburgh Festivals, by Edinburgh – based photographer by Eniko Meszaros.

Joie de vivre?

For a while, I was thinking a lot about what joy of life means to me. It is so easy to confuse it with some kind of constant cheerfulness, some kind of misinterpreted and enforced ‘positive thinking’ that it took me a while to figure out what I mean by it.

One thing that I found is that joy of life for me is best expressed in the seemingly most random things that we come across when least expected. A spontaneous act, an unlikely combination. In some contexts – in art or during a festival – these acts and combinations are more likely to happen, but the fact is that they can happen anywhere and anytime, even on the most ordinary day at a well-known location. The feeling that life is constantly moving forward, defying our expectations, and the deep rooted satisfaction that this realisation brings us are all important parts of understanding that joy of life is not about happiness, or about our dreams and hopes: sometimes joy of life exists in defiance of all these.

The exhibition is about festivals in Edinburgh, and more specifically about the Fringe. However, some of the photos are selected not necessarily because they were taken at the Fringe, but because they express the same joie de /vivre/.

Eniko Meszaros

Find out more about Eniko on her website and blog