Pictures of the week: Hungarian Sea, by Michal Solarski

For a child growing up in communist Poland in the 1970s, summer holidays at Lake Balaton in Hungary were heavenly: technicolour to Poland’s steel grey → Photograph: Michal Solarski

Photographer Michal Solarski revisited Lake Balaton and tried to recapture the emotion of those childhood summers. “I wanted to make the images vivid: I used a Kodak VC film that they’ve now discontinued → Photograph: Michal Solarski

The place was the same, in a way. My picture-taking was very unstructured. I was trying to find people who would fit the story → Photograph: Michal Solarski

“I saw these twin girls with the Trabant car and thought, ‘I have to take this picture.’ I approached the parents and they said no. They were suspicious, I suppose. I walked away, but I got a few yards down the road and thought, I’ve got to take that picture. In the end they let me take two or three frames” → Photograph: Michal Solarski

“I spent six summers in a row with my parents and my sisters at the lake,” Solarski says, “but my parents never took any pictures there. I don’t think they even had a camera.” → Photograph: Michal Solarski

“Poland was very strict,” Solarski says. “The Hungary of the 70s and 80s was more relaxed, and seemed more vivid and colourful. For a child like me, the experience was very powerful → Photograph: Michal Solarski

After the iron curtain fell in 1989, Solarski, suddenly granted the freedom to travel, went all over the world. After 25 years, he revisited Lake Balaton and tried to recapture the emotion of those childhood summers. Photograph: Michal Solarski