"Discovering the world": Tourists in the Chinese desert

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week is the "Cognition" series by Hungarian photographer Bens Bakonyi, who explored tourist movements in Chinese deserts and oases.

I started shooting when I was 18. I was always interested in exploring the spatial location of myself in relation to other people. I shot the "Cognition" series in China, where I tried to move as far as possible from the subjects and chose the role of an outside observer. A look from such a significant distance allows to fully comprehend what he saw. It was thanks to the chosen observation point that I was able to reflect in the photographs the collective spirit of a group of people. People in the photographs, no matter how many of them, appear as a community, as a single organism: you can see how they move together in space, leaving a harmonious mark behind them, and in the process of this journey they comprehend something previously unknown. Tourists became the heroes of the project, and the photos themselves were taken in the Chinese Geological Park Zhangye Danksya and the Dunhuang oasis, which was once considered the gateway to China on the Great Silk Road. These places made an incredible impression on me, as well as on tourists - as if I had been in space. Looking at the tourists, absorbed by their emotions in a giant desert, you realize that we, the people, are just little dark points against the backdrop of endless white sands. And everything that we do - we line up in one row, then randomly scatter on the surface.