Erika Lakatos

(1964, Budapest)

Erika Lakatos is a Washington Creative Prize-winning photographer, contemporary artist, and an experimental jazz singer. Enrolling at Long Island University to study jazz and winning a scholarship in 1994, she chose photography as her second major. She experimented with sepia technique in the creation of miniature photographs. She also liked improvising with image transfer and often worked with instant film, which she scanned, blew up and enhanced with hand-painting. In 1997, one of her works won an international university photography contest and remained a branding image for the New York Media Department of Long Island University. After earning her MA in music and photography and exhibiting at many New York venues, she taught drawing at a public school in Brooklyn until she moved back to Hungary in 2004. She has exhibited her works frequently at numerous galleries in Europe. Central to her art, which continually strives to expand and blur the boundaries of fine art and photography, is the portrait. She refers to a group of such portrait images as unique, distinct hand-painted icons.