SUMMARY 2006/5-6

One can get more information on Attila Montvai’s life and career from Sándor Bacskai’s interview – ‘‘Unfortunately, I have two ‘half brains’…’’ – with the photo artist. ‘‘For me photography is not a »pseudo aesthetical« message in which the forms of visible surface, the composition system of straight and curved lines are the point; it is much more one of the basic tools of recog-nition and identification. With some exaggeration, I would say that the available (virtual) substance of knowledge provided by the environment turns into reality if I take a photo of the scene.’’

A thought from photo artist At ti la Montvai’s essay ‘‘Einstein believed that..’’: by searching for the absolute abstraction the magazine de Stijl and Mondriaan tried to get around exactly that difficulty they eventually ran into. Their works, their achievements ended up in a totally uncontrollable medium, the medium of verbal judgements and interpretations instead of the sphere of order refering to itself. The dynamics of that medium is shaped by powers or cultural determinations much more deep-seated than single, superficial visuality. Many times centuries-old traditions, experience serve as a starting point.

In ‘‘Sometime, somewhere, somehow…’’ Gábor Pfisztner reviews a series of photos – ‘‘Green area’’ - by Gábor Arion Kudász photographer graduated from the Faculty of Visual Communication at the University of Applied Arts. Arion’s photos cannot be looked upon as landscape photographs. He has no ambition to open a wider field of interpretation in order to place the scenery into it. Although the landscape is present as countryside, but not in its concrete reality, instead, in a simplified almost symbolic form, rather as a symbol, the author concludes.

While Attila Montvai is devoted to natural science, Sándor Dobos author of the article ‘‘Dobos, you have more than one life’’ used to be devoted among others to chemistry and fine arts; he started photographing only a few years ago (let it be admitted, at high level). ‘‘Since 2000 twice a year, in spring and in autumn, I hook my caravan to my car, and I set off on a five or six week trip of photographing… many thousand years ago the Mediterraneum had been declared to be habitable, therefore for long I have been in love with its landscapes ‘kneaded’ thoroughly by man. As a chemist I used to work there as teacher for shorter and longer periods.’’

In ‘‘Questions about the picture’’ Zsófia Somogyi deals with the works of Gábor Ősz who graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the University of Fine Arts. ‘‘If you review the key words in Gábor ?sz’s art work, it emerges that he deals with the fundamental problems of art in his works. He probes deeply into the roots of the process of creating, he makes use of the mediums available today with – one could say - archaic simplicity.’’n

In a series of essays ‘‘Photos from the past. The fate of photo collections and archives in the digital era’’ Klára Szarka tries to make an inventory of what kind of photo inheritance we have got from our ancestors, what we should take over right now, and what we should leave to our descendants? In addition to a few central collections in Budapest (Historical Photo Archive of the Hungarian National Museum, War History Museum etc.) she visited a couple of museums in the country (e.g. in Tolna county), she talked to private collect-ors, she visited the Index on the Internet, and tried to get a picture of small but peculiar collections (e.g. the Hórusz Collection.).

József Tóth photographer commemorates József Németh who has passed away this year: ‘‘His human and professional prominence and reputation is undisputable, all that combined with great modesty. I have never met an artist like him. Anything that matters in photographic profession I have learned from him… The last classic passed away in this person.’’

Alain Paiement is the subject of the article ‘‘Secret fold of space and time’’ by Gábor Pfisztner. The way of expression and of looking at things is that makes the young French-Canadian photographer different from today’s photographing practice and from the representatives of trends often regarded as fashionable. Plainly speaking, he makes an unusual montage of time and space while sometimes making use of his arranged or narrative photographing ‘‘tools’’.

It is thanks to the specific teaching method at the Finish Art and Design University (TAIK) that the Helsinki School was established where apart from crea-tive critics and teamwork, great emphasis is laid on the coordinated appli-cation of art theories and realism. A member of the School and photo artist Jari Silomäki’s ‘‘My Weather Diary’’ is reviewed by Alexa Csizmadia and his other work ‘‘Rehearsal for Adulthood’’ by Zsófia Somogyi.

András Banovits interview with Finnish photoartist Sarianna Metsähuone who lives in Sweden.

The Hasselblad Foundation organised an exhibition – New Nordem Photography – of young Scandinavian photographers’ photos – Gábor Pfisztner reports on the photo show.

In ‘‘Wars and peace, the living and the dead’’ György Szeg? reports on the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) albums: ‘‘It is still an open question whether the news type means of photographic report would generate new innovative phraseology for the emblematic world of the »old-fashioned still pictures«; and if so, to what an extent will conventional photographing be able to maintain its medial independence. To answer the question I compare the contemporary pictures of three MTI albums covering three eras of Hungarian history, to the pictures of today’s Magnum photographers shown on a travelling exhibition ‘mapping’ the new EU member-countries.’’

Silvai Paoli curator at the Municipal Photographic Archive in the Sforza Castle in Milan, lectured on the work in their photo archive, on their conservation and presentation activity and on the organisation of the archive, in spring 2006 in the Historical Photo Archive of the Hungarian National Museum.

The Section on photographing technology starts with reports on the photokina 2006 show. A few ‘‘highlights’’ from Zoltán Fejér’s report: Olympus, Hewlett Packard, Epson Stylus Pro 3800, Kodak Easy Share V705, Leica M8. And the names of some of the photo artists exhibiting in Cologne, cited in Anna Kotzan’s report: Wim Cox and Maurice Cox, ‘‘Reporters sans front-iers’’, Farrokh Chothia, Martin Parr, Patric Fouad, Michael Schnabel.

Zsuzsa Farkas wrote a thorough paper on the photographing activity in the 1860s of Miklós Barabás famous portrait-painter in the 19th century. ‘‘Miklós Barabás’s oeuvre known to us (about 1000 paintings, 500 drawings) cannot be worked up in its entirety but only details of it. Special emphasis has been laid on his portrays of scientists and writers, his actor portrays are dealt with as a separate part of his works. The photos constitute a small but essential part of his oeuvre; the artist’s optical, mechanical and theoretical knowledge is regarded as basis of the Hungarian photographing art.’’

Zoltán Fejér’s photo historical article – ‘‘Atelier Manassé’’ – deals with the life work of Olga Spolarics and Adorján Wlassics. After WW I the couple moved to Vienna, and by the late twenties they became significant players in the beauty industry. Their pictures made in their atelier in downtown Vienna had typical Manassé style easily discernible also to the layman.

In ‘‘Cities’ fate. Vienna and Budapest around 1900’’ György Szeg? makes a comparison between the town photographs of two famous photographers in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, between those by August Stauda in Vienna and by György Klösz in Budapest. The author’s expressive examples confirm that Vienna and Budapest used to be not simply the metropolises of the same dual Monarchy but they were very similar in detail – such as the life of the man-in-the-street, means of everyday life – as well.

‘‘The history of Hungarian photographing has been enriched by an extraordinary personality’’ András Bán writes in ‘‘The creation of Alberik’’ – If once rewriting peculiar pictorial ambitions in the 1950s, Alberik Sándor Vass would deserve a separate chapter. Not even those well-informed in the history of photographing could have knowledge of him. Ordained in 1936 and functioning as Catholic priest in Tihany, Búcsúszentlászló, Pápa and Balatongyörök, he was an amateur photographer, and the same as in the case of many Benedictine monks, his period of enthusiastic photogra-pher can be linked to his functioning as priest in the Benedictine Abbey in Tihany.

The last part of Sándor Tátrai’s series ‘‘Color management’’ deals with the colour management of printers (the so-called RGB i.e. non-postscript printers and CMYK i.e. printers with Raster Image Processor software).

In the latest part of his series DigiTREND, József Rák reports on the latest results achieved in the manufacturing of silicone-based ‘‘film raw materials’’ i.e. of the sensor chips.