These two dates mark the time of the "birth" of the first and last pictures in this album. During these thirty-one years and my visits to Transylvania, I was lucky to find villages where I found traditional peasant culture almost untouched, and where I could witness the gradual transformation that would profoundly and inevitably change the countenance of this region.

I went to those Hungarian and Romanian villages where much of the old peasant way of life - the customs, the peasant garbs, the music, the dance - could be found till the late eighties, for an specially long time in Europe. And along with the tradition the binding force that gave communities their cohesion was very much in evidence as well.

In these villages, I was able to capture on film something I felt should be preserved.