Photobook dummy by Dániel Halász (Hungary), shortlisted for the Dummy Award 2026. The book is about the smallest Hungarian villages, places with fewer than 100 residents, and their everyday resourcefulness. The project began as a personal return to the photographer's roots and over seven years grew into doctoral research. Instead of the simple narratives of rural decline often seen in the media, he found a complex, living culture of resilience, in which people adapt and improvise to hold rural life together: a collection of survival strategies in which the village becomes a place of unconscious sculptures, such as a window made from an old fridge shelf, a gate from industrial scrap or a tool repaired for the fifth time, evidence of deep material knowledge. The objects are treated with the same care as the portraits of their makers, and fragments of conversations, statistical data and personal notes sit beside the images. The book follows a poetics of making-do, the unintentional forms that emerge when people must build a life with limited resources, and tries to archive the paradox of communities that are vanishing and yet stubbornly present. The Dummy Award, organised by the PhotoBookMuseum in Cologne, shortlisted 48 unpublished dummies from about 325 entries from more than 45 countries; the shortlist travels on a world tour of photography events and venues.