Gergely Papp (1922–2000) was born into a peasant family on a farmstead in Pusztaecseg, now Ecsegfalva, in eastern Hungary, and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1938 he learned the mechanics of photography from his brother and began to depict life in the village: christenings, harvests, hunting, weddings, funerals. He documented provincial Hungary before and during the Second World War, the communist regime and the failed 1956 revolution, and stopped in early 1963. Distressed by the nationalisation of the family's land, he cut down his fruit trees and took a final self-portrait among the remains. Much of his archive was destroyed by vandals; the Archive of Modern Conflict acquired the few surviving negatives, many published here for the first time.