The Hungarian visual artist Bence Illyés has used Zines — small, informal, hand-made publications — to explore aspects of Jewish art and iconography related to Jewish cemeteries and other built heritage.
In 2024, he carried out his work as one of the three artists chosen for the artists in residency program at the ShUM cities in Germany. In this essay he discusses why he uses the Zine format for his projects.
Zine creation as a form of heritage preservation
By Bence Illyés
November 12, 2025
Working in collaboration with the graphic designer Judit Borsi, I have now completed my third zine that aims to present, preserve, and reinterpret part of the Jewish cultural and religious heritage.
A zine (short for magazine or fanzine) is usually a small, self-published booklet created by individuals or groups to share personal ideas, art, stories, or opinions outside the mainstream publishing. Often handmade and distributed in limited quantities, zines emphasize creativity, self-expression, community and ideas over profit or polish.
For us, zine creation, which has its roots in underground and DIY culture, is an appealing method of heritage preservation and knowledge sharing that can successfully reach younger generations. The aim is also to inspire others to create, since the essence of zine culture is that anyone can create such a publication at relatively low cost, even using a home printer alone.
Our first zine project, called “Art of Abandoned Jewish Cemeteries of Hungary,” focused on the art and iconography found on Jewish gravestones in Hungary. We began work on it in 2021, with support from the Paiedeia European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm. We carried out work on our second project in 2024, when I was chosen for the international artist-in-residence program of the ShUM cities, Germany. I carried out my residency in Speyer, where there is a monumental medieval mikvah, and with Judit we produced a zine that focused on Jewish symbols and on water.
In our latest project, we wanted to showcase the values of the Jewish cemetery on Salgótarjáni Street in Budapest: its unique graves and symbols, as well as the life stories associated with them.
The project started with a personal experience – I had known about the cemetery for a long time and had visited it several times, but during a photo report I made for the Népszava newspaper in December of 2024, something about the cemetery really struck me. My report appeared under the evocative title “Memories of a crumbling bourgeois world,” which in fact aptly described the feelings and thoughts that arose in me as I walked through the cemetery.
This cemetery is interesting not only because of its Jewish character or the fantastic sculptural tombs and buildings by the noted architect Béla Lajta, but also because it shows a cross-section of a short period — roughly between the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the First World War — which was practically the only era of bourgeois development in Hungarian history.
Without the work of the people buried here, the Hatvany family, Manfréd Weiss, József Zwack, and the Kohner family,and others, Hungarian culture, industry, and even Budapest as we know it today would be unimaginable.
Walking among the graves in the cemetery takes us back to a time when the middle class, the bourgeoise, the civic elite, truly embodied the values that the word citizen once stood for. They viewed social status not primarily as a privilege but as a responsibility. Their charitable and social contributions would be unprecedented in today’s world.
Manfred Weiss, for example, founded one of the first soup-kitchens in Budapest, where more than 2,000 people could eat every day, and Lajos Hatvany could be mentioned as well, as probably the greatest supporter of the Hungarian literature of his time.
Unfortunately, along with the cemetery’s steadily deteriorating condition, the memories, culture, and values of this era are also rapidly disappearing. That is why we felt it was important to create a project that would remind us not only of the cemetery’s artistic, historical and cultural value, but also of this “mentality heritage”.
In our zine, we present the cemetery through the symbols on the graves and the life stories associated with them, inviting readers to walk around the cemetery themselves and discover its incredible treasures while they are still accessible. The graves of Ferenc Elek and his wife, decorated with unique symbols, the Egyptian-style Budai Goldberger tomb, and the grave of Gusztáv Hertzka, decorated with painted mosaics, are all unique works of art.
The publication was created as part of the Saving Through Art project, with the support of JDC and Mozaik HUB, in partnership with Judapest. Judapest is a contemporary design shop in Budapest that aims to celebrate Jewish culture and heritage through modern, creative, and locally made Judaica and gifts, and they were the host organization of this project. The Mozaik Hub which is supported by JDC, is a community space and support center in Budapest that helps Jewish organizations and social initiatives grow through networking, mentorship, and shared resources. It aims to strengthen Jewish life in Hungary by fostering collaboration and innovation. [1]
The project also would not have been possible without the private donors who supported our crowdfunding campaign, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their help.
– – – – –
Bence Illyés is a Hungarian visual artist who has been involved with several projects. In 2024, he was chosen as one of the artists in the artist in residence program of the ShUM cities in Germany. Read about his work during the residency HERE