Budapest Courtyards

Between 2014 and 2016, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre visited 400 of the more than 4,000 internal courtyards in Budapest. Their large number and variety of styles incorporating different facets of classicism and modernity make them a remarkable architectural phenomenon-a charming second city within the city. Marchand and Meffre systematically documented these courtyards, producing a typological series that describes this particular form of collective housing and reflects the city's tumultuous history, its changing political regimes and economy. Budapest Courtyards allows us to delight in the crumbling grandeur of the courtyards, and observe the developments and personal strategies of adaptation which they evidence.

Born in 1981 and 1987 in the Parisian suburbs, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre started photographing independently in 2001. In 2005 they began to collaborate for their project The Ruins of Detroit, which Steidl published to acclaim in 2010 and which is now in its fourth edition. Steidl has also published Marchand and Meffre's Gunkanjima (2013).