WHAT IS YOUR IMMIGRATION STORY?

Richard Baranyai is a photographer.

I'm the only part of my family here in the US. I came here in 2012. My job in Hungary went bankrupt so I was looking for what to do and where to do it. I was always into photo, so I looked up a school in San Francisco, Academy of Arts, and they accepted me. I came here, started to study with no plan, technically. I was like, hey, San Francisco is far away enough, it will be amazing. It was a little bit more expensive than I thought. So, I was like okay now we have to figure this out, so I just started making it happen, I guess. I was probably one of the two of my whole class or year who was from the beginning always working in photo as an assistant, as a digitech, as a photographer and everything and since I started the whole photo career, I never had to do luckily anything else, just photo. 

WHAT DOES YOUR CURRENT JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?

I have some cousins who are living in the US, but they are more distant cousins. One of them, she lives in Sacramento. I haven't met her for, I think, like a good 15 years before I moved here. And she was nice enough to help me out in the first month just to get me to, hey, you have to go to the bank and get a bank card and you have to talk to this and that person about your driver's license or stuff like that. And I could live at her place for a bit. And that was a big, big help. But again, I haven't met her. I didn't even know who to expect, because I think I was seven years old when I last met her before that. And I have another cousin who lives in Pennsylvania, who we were closer with when I was growing up, but not too much closer. Either we met once a year or something. And she got married, went to Pennsylvania and when I moved to New York that's when we got much closer because it was just close, so we met a lot, and we talked a lot and with her I still keep contact to this day. The other one in Sacramento not that much recently unfortunately. Why, just let me carry this as a personal curiosity. 

I've been riding motorcycles for, I believe, 20 years now. I started back in Hungary when I moved to San Francisco. I practically didn't even have any other means of transportation, just a bicycle and a motorcycle, which was weird because everyone was like, but you need to have a car. I'm like, why? Because you're in the US, you need a car. And I'm like, no, I have a motorcycle. That's enough. And when I moved to New York, there was a very nice social group around motosynchons and that's technically what brought me here too. Like I have one of my best friends, we used to ride together, we used to talk about motorcycles together and everything there and he got me the job that brought me to LA. So, motorcycles are a very important part of my life, I think. It always drives community. And interestingly enough, there are very, very much bikers in the photo community as well. Like a lot of photographers who I know ride, a lot of assistants, everything. So it just acts as a galvanizer, I guess. There's always something to talk about. Like there's this tattoo shop up corner away. They are just trying to open up a motorcycle themed shop as well. Like we could immediately start talking about things just because there are bikes. Same thing, there's a car place, a vintage Japanese car place on the other side of the bridge, and we could immediately start talking about things because there is motorsports background and things like that so I think it's a it's a very very good thing to start communities around mutual interest.

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