SUMMARY 2000/5-6
Gábor Pálfai was working for Magyar Fotó Állami Vállalat (Hungarian Photo State Company) and for its successor MTI from 1952 to 1994, starting his career as press photographer. Later he was appointed head of the photo division holding that post until his retirement. In this interview given to Sándor Bacskai he is talking about his masters Ern? Vadas, Rudolf Járai, Károly Gink, about his photographer and reporter missions such as his journey to Vietnam.
“Take life that way!” – is the title of an interview Klára Szarka made with László Almási one-time photographer of the sports magazine Képes Sport. Almási had joined the sports weekly in 1957 and used to work together with Tibor Hirsch, Tibor Komlós, Károly Hemz?. Prior to its occasing publication, he was the photo editor of the magazine. He was sent to cover a number of national and international sports events and competition as well as three Olympic Games. Therefore, it is no wonder that he has a lot of stories in store to tell us.
Klára Szarka: “Edit Molnár – something in return” In 1951 Edit Molnár, the same as Gábor Pálfai, started working for the Magyar Fotó Állami Vállalat (Hungarian Photo State Company), and continued her carcer at the MTI. She, too, tells stories about old colleagues, such as Ern? Vadas, Ferenc Botta but also about the later decline, as well as about the painter and old friend Béla Kondor, and about her relation to writers, such as József Lengyel, Péter Veres, László Nagy.
Klára Szarka also interviewed Günter Osterloh manager general of Leica Akademie. Established in 1986, Leica Akademie has been operating in the building of the cloister of Altenberg a couple of kilometres from the camera factory in Solms. The factory has a permanent office, lecture and showrooms and workshops. Photo dealers are usually trained in the factory, and amateurs in Altenberg.
In his article “Who has ever heard and what about photo restoration?”, Péter Baki presents Judit Stress, book restorer who studied art history, and got a scholarship to attend a course at the Photo Conservation and Restoration Workshop in Paris. Currently her special field is conservation and restoration of photos and negatives in the National Széchenyi Library.
In “The photographer of moods” Marianna Kiscsatári presents the career of Ernő Vadas whose work has been analysed by many and slightly stereotyped as “the best of the Hungarian style” or “the creator of formal beauty workship”, or “the artist who set the course of Hungarian style”. Anyway it is definitely worth taking a close look at Ernő Vadas’s artistics work.
Katalin Baricz, well-known photo artist, presents her “Polariod side” in the Polaroid Gallery. “Something must be in the picture which ‘upsets’ it. Because if everything is perfect, then there is nothing that thrills you. I always leave something open, and in that case I know the composition or the light is not perfect, but I just leave it as it is”, she says.
György Szegő: How you look at it? Photography in the 20th century. Our correspondent reports in detail on an exhibition of the Hannover Sprengel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers’ intentions was to give a full account of photography in the 20th century through 500 photos selected from the best photo collections in the world. Pictures of world famous photographers such as Eugéne Atget, Paul Strand, August Sander or Walker Evans, are put on show at the exhibition.
Art historian Katalin Néray writes in an essay about György Tóth’s portrays that those portrays marked out an entirely new way, a change from “outside” for ”inside” scenes, if you like. To the new way he needed new technology, therefore he found out the multiple exposition, which makes contours blurred and smudgy; breaking down the face or a typical gesture into phases it “grabs” a moment or makes it visible.
In “Millenary Fancy Ball. Cindy Sherman’s career among roles and fancy dresses”, János Sturcz writes an essay about the career of the famous American photo artist. The criticism of today’s mass media is in the focus of Sherman’s ouvre. She resorted to the camera as “last means” of “taking a snapshot” of life, she created an unique artistic form linked with photography, the film, painting, performance, concept, etc., suitable for addressing an audience much larger than the connoisseurs of traditional exquisite arts.
Zoltán Fejér congratulates photokina on its 50th anniversary. He reports on technological novelties in the silver-plate photography, in particular on the latest products of Canon, Hasselblad, Leica, Nikon, Rollei, and Kodak. He also pictures the atmosphere of the greatest photographic fair by emotional elements.
Two authors reports on Novelties in digital technology at photokina: Szabolcs Mike presents photographing devices while Péter Szabó reports on new applications.
Éva Kossuth editor in chief of Tárogató Canadian Hungarian magazine is the author of the article “Dénes Dévényi: A Hungarian polymath” in Vancouver. Dévényi a polymath indeed (engineer, photo artist, teacher and philosopher), is talking about his general view of life and the world.
