SUMMARY 2003/1-2

In an essay “The perfection of imperfection”, Károly Kincses congratulates Károly Szert Minyó for his series “Pessimistic hope, optimistic sorrow”. “Minyó is an old fox, cunning. He does not really reveal what he wants us to see. He just makes us all to view together. He thinks, not only the creator but viewers, as well, should work hard for the experience, all of us should look for and find what interests us in he has created. Then the viewers can be delighted because they have seen in the picture what they wanted to and not what the photographer wants to get them to swallow.”

Commenting on Sarolta Szabó’s camera obscuras, Károly Kincses notes about the collection “Preserving the state of joy”: “They are built up on strong mental and emotional grounds and are bearing the essential features of the process of creating typical of all arts, i.e. the birth of inspiration or idea, the way of choosing the best suitable materials and means, their proper use, and the proper installation of the work created. Because in this way it is complete.”

In an essay “Perception, subject, tradition: photographic destruction” András Bohár makes phenomenological comments on Péter Herendi’s works: “Péter Herendi draws our attention to the uniqueness of the existent of substance. The subject, the existing thing is watching itself, opens up by this gesture, and it works not the other way round. A suggestion is made against the anthropologic peculiarity striving for defining man, the subject/the individual embedded in the cognitive-technical spirit of our age that makes everything perceptible, conceivable, materialisable, once for all.

Sándor Bacskai interviewed Miklós Déri former photographer of the weekly Magyar Narancs, currently working for the Prime Minister’s Office. “There are photos, Déri says, that had been etched into my brain when I was very young; I mean pictures called snapshots in the seventies and the eighties, and thereafter authentic reports. In my view, a picture is good if it has a story or it raises questions that cannot be answered at once.”

Ferenc Markovics: “At revved up rpm”, an interview with Balázs Gárdi. It is not the first time that Balázs Gárdi photographer of the daily Népszabadság, is nominated as press photographer of the Year, but this year he has been awarded a World Press Photo prize in the category of sports photos. The young photographer’s photos are getting matured: “Beyond learning the trick of trade of photographing, my way of thinking has also changed, and this is more important than to master the basics of technique, as the secret of consciously making pictures lies hidden in your head, in your brain, everything is decided there.”

In a report, Péter Baki presents World Press Photo 2002 prize-winner József L. Szentpéteri. It’s worth paying attention to Szentpéteri, a biologist lecturing plant organism and nature photographing at the Janus Pannonis University in Pécs: “If you examine what the photographer’s and what nature’s role is in making a good nature photograph, you come to the conclusion that nature is the genuine creator, we are just artisans. As far as I know, nature photo is not considered to be a branch of arts. I don’t know any nature photographer of international repute who would call himself an artist.”

Gábor Pfisztner’s opinion of Bettina Rheims & Richard Bramly’s I.N.R.I. (photo) exhibition illustrating the life of Jesus Christ is contained in the title of his essay: “The art of kitsch or kitsch art”, the “Subject of the investigation is Christian religiosity, the importance of faith in Christ to the individual person and to the community, says Pfisztner. Despite all efforts of the photographers, the original idea may have the reverse effect, and instead of probing into his own feelings, the visitor is just a spectator of how a modern technical medium is able to catch a two thousand years old tradition with its own means, how is it able, if it is indeed, to visualise its mentality, to transmit its original meaning?”

“The painter of modern life”, this is how Gábor Pfisztner characterises Jeff Wall winner of the Hasselblad Award 2002. The black-and-white photos of Wall who teaches history of art in Vancouver, Canada, are reminiscent of 19th century genre painting. He “builds up”, creates the view, constructs the moment based on a preliminary conception, a plan, and then he transforms it to a homogeneous and strictly constructed picture. He tries to recreate strange light effects typical of panel paintings. What he makes are not snapshots but precisely constructed, well-weighed pictures.

This time Zoltán Fejér went to Vienna, and first he visited the exhibition of Japanese photo artist Toshinobu Takeuchi docent of the University of Applied Arts Tokyo. Takeuchi’s landscape photographs show the nature forming power of land, wind, water and fire in accordance with the view of life in the Far-East. “He is working quietly, radiating joy and happiness. He is a very happy person…”Apropos the reopening the Vienna Albertina exhibition hall, Zoltán Fejér makes the Readers acquainted with the history of the building.

The photo archives of the Vienna National Library having more than 2 million historical and contemporary photographs, is by now the largest Austrian collection of documentary photographs. With its latest exhibition “Im Blickpunkt” (In viewpont), the Library is getting more active in photography. Etelka L. Baji makes the Readers acquainted with the history and importance of these photo archives.

György Szegő visited the Vienna Municipal Museum, where a large exhibition gives an overall view of Soviet arts of photographing in the twenties and thirties, giving a more objective picture of Eastern arts than before. Photographs by Nikolaj Andrejev, Alexander Grinberg, Vasilij Ultjin, Boris Ignatovich, Max Penzon, Yurij Yeremin and above of all Alexander Rodchenko help go along the road from The pictorialism and the modern to the Socialist realism.

Klára Romoda reports on a little-know collection, the photographs by Dr. Tamás Rados Benedictine monk and teacher in Pannonhalma. The name of the photographer monk of the Pannonhalma Benedictine Abbey, Gergely Palatin is well-known to those having an interest in the history of photographing, but that of Prof. Rados with a PhD in history of literature and classical phylology, is less. However, his six hundred negatives have recently, popped up so to say of nowhere.

In an essay “Fateless picture”, Gábor Biczó makes an attempt to interpret a blurred black-and-white photograph taken of a few, probably Ruthene shepherds and a boy: “Reading the picture is an excellent hermeneutic exercise, he points out. In particular if the photo is made to have no meaning, i.e. the moment of the exposure couples things together which otherwise do not belong together.”

György Sümegi is examining photographs made during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He outlines how those photos should be arranged according to their meaning, function, using, contents and the photographers making them. He also touches on the role of those photos during the reprisal and the post-revolutionary propaganda, as well as on the photos as “prototypes” of monuments, paintings.

The Hungarian Photographic Museum will publish a book “Képmutogatók. The History of Photographic view” by mid-summer 2003, which traces the development of optical experience. Magdolna Kolta’s essay “The lonesome pleasure of picture viewing” is a summary of a section of the book, discussing the different ways of meeting with the picture hidden in the box – the peep-box (or Guckkasten in German), the cosmorama and the stereoscope.