SUMMARY 2007/2
The first article in Fotóművészet 2007/2 is Sándor Bacskai’s interview with photo artist Zoltán Fejér columnist for this review. Z. Fejér member of the Photo Artists Association, well-known photo journalist and photo art collector who used to work for the F?városi Fotó Vállalat (Budapest Photography Co.), and as photo artist participated in photo exhibitions, has been taking active part in the Hungarian professional photographing since the late sixties; apart from his career he talks demonstratively about the photographing of that period of time in the interview.-In “Have you ever visited Budapest? Károly Kincses comments on Péter Szabó’s photo and video project: “Please, don’t look just at the end product – juxtaposed pictures – no matter how interesting they in themselves are, but at the whole together! The method – thought over thoroughly, generating more questions and problems linked and related to lots of things or everything – is that can give you a lot of intellectual and aesthetic delight, the same as the two dozens of pictures presenting the end product.”-The domestic market of Hungarian contemporary art photographing has been given a swing – Gábor Ébli notes in his essay “Contemporary, Hungarian and photo: a chance of (international) success?” Apparently, interest in classic and contemporary photo artistic works has increased, and the author supports his opinion with concrete facts.-Fotóművészet keeps a track of the international internet photo competition of HP. In “Picture in the picture – town in the town. Picture in the town – town (in) on the picture” Zsófia Somogyi interviews photographer Ábel Szalontai senior lecturer of the photographing faculty at the Moholy-Nagy Arts College and a jury-member of the photo competition. Apropos of the photos sent in for the competition and the winning works, they are talking about the tendency of contemporary photographing and the responsibility of photographing.-In an interview Sándor Bacskai presents Illés Sarkantyu Paris-based photo artist. Having graduated from the Képz?művészeti Szakközépiskola (arts secondary school) and then the Iparművészeti F?iskola (university for applied arts) the young photographer and video artist ended up in Paris and continued his studies at Sorbonne. His pictures published in this issue of Fotóművészet are photos made of Hungarians living in France. The interview is completed with one of Sarkantyu’s writing in which he reports on the circumstances of his meeting with the Paris-based C. A. designer. His report can serve as example how one should imagine the current situation of a model and (his) her photographer.-The authors of the book “Faces from beyond the River Lajta, Júlia Szászi journalist and Gyula Fodor photographer draw the portraits of Hungarians fleeing Hungary in 1945, 1948, and 1956 and settled in Vienna – among others that of a professor of ethno-graphy, a member of a museum board, a translator, a brewer industrialist, a restaurant-keeper, a drama teacher, a pianist, a violin-maker, a café headwaiter. György Szeg? reviews the book.-In “Street talks” György Kerényi comments on a series of photos “Anzix/József-város” made by György Stalter. “Both the colours and the objects scattered on Stalter’s photos are illogic. Everywhere there is something that ought be somewhere else, that used to have a function in some other place that it had abandoned for long, and by now its task is by and by to be no more an object”.. the author notes.-According to the judgement of the members of the board of the Hasselblad Foundation – Gábor Pfisztner points out – photo artist Nan Goldin’s persistence with which he makes the intimate and personal moments of his and his friends’ lives visible by means of documentary photography, is that makes him worthy of rewarding him with the 2007 life achievement award. According to the jury Gondin has managed unintentionally to express the documentary objective (that can be interpreted as proof of own existence), that was formulated in many strata of society in those times, as basic demand.-“Nowadays Andreas Gursky a Becher-Schule “graduate” is counted as one of the best known German photo artists. His works are bought and collected by countless galleries and museums, and prominent art institutions organize exhibitions of his photos. Critics used to praise his works, but since a retrospective exhibition in 2001 in the New York Contemporary Arts Museum he has been criticized by some critics who raise mostly problems of photographing in general, yet they criticize first of all Gursky” – starts Gábor Pfisztner his report on Andreas Gursky’s life achievement exhibition in “The price of grandness”.-In Photos of the 1956 revolution in publications published on the 50th anniversary of the uprising” Katalin Jalsovszky reports in detail among others on the topical volume of the Kor-képek (portraits of the epoch) selected from the publication of MTI (Hungarian Telecommunication Agency), on world famous Austrian photographer Erich Les-sing’s album, Chronicles 1956 published by Kossuth Könyvkiadó publishing house, on a joint publication of the Fotóművész Szövetség (Photo Artists Association) and the Hungarian Photographic Museum, and on an album of the F?városi Levéltár (Budapest Archives).-Prominent photo artist Zsuzsa Farkas analyses János Vaszary’s relationship to photographs. The relationship seems to be inconsistent: according to his remaining writings, Vaszary used to be consistently an “anti-photograph” painter. At the same time a number of letters, orders and invoices indicate that he had his works photographed in order to let them edit in catalogues, books, and many times for himself to make easy to display his life-work. “Anyway, rather the Kodak than naturalism” is one of his aphorisms.-In “Art, investment, recording…” Zoltán Fejér reports that in compliance with the current tendencies on the international and Hungarian antiquities markets, in Hungary, too, investing in antiquities counts as long-term investment. A certain purchaser potential is about having interests in photo antiquities, and Hungarian museologists upset about the stagnant Hungarian market, have established the Magyar Fotótörténeti Társaság Egyesület (Hungarian Photo History Society).-New albums on Péter Timár’s “Bookshelf”: Tóth György (Magyar Fotográfiai Múzeum–Hungarian Photographic Museum, with the comments of László Beke and Katalin Náray); András Bánkuti: People; Photos of the Year 2006 (Magyar Újságírók Országos Szövetsége–National Association of Hungarian Journalists–Magyar Fotóriporterek Társaság–Society of Hungarian Press Photographers); Ferenc Markovics: Lights and facts. 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Photo Artists Association; Photo-grapher’s eyes. Pictures of three months (MTI); Márta Branczik–Zsuzsanna Demeter: Stages of Budapest building constructions; Károly Pump: Budapest; Robert Capa: A bit blurred.
