SUMMARY 2007/3

In Ignored Limits Mihály Surányi interviews Zsuzsanna Kemenesi photographer. “From the age of six I had learn ballet, at fourteen I started learning drawing, thereafter I studied painting at the Janus Pannonius University. I felt, I needed a bit more of theoretical knowledge, (therefore) I studied cultural anthropology, and then I managed to become immersed in social communication, in particular in interperso, known for her series Infranesia, Sweet cherry…, Spring fairy.

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László Kunkovács photo artist and ethnographer, on whom hono-rary doctorate has recently been conferred by the Moholy-Nagy University, is presented in an interview – Thanks to the camera – by Klára Szarka. This time it is not a conventional report on a career in the form of dialogue, but these are sentences, ideas, thoughts, monologues combined into a confession. Here is a example picked out at random: “What a pack of nonsense have been formulated about photographing in university textbooks on aesthetics. Firstly, it is originated from the film; shouldn’t it be done the other way round? They claim, photographing – the same as graphics – has less means compared to painting. That’s all nonsense… You can express any of your feelings and sentiments by means of the camera. It is just up to you to do so. Let’s have self-respect!”

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In Bit-map, map to find your way in the digital word, Gábor Pfisztner reviews Imre Drégely’s photos? “As a matter of fact Imre Drégely plays a double play with us, with the viewers. On the one hand, he makes depictions, pictures that – through their geometric form and ornamental surface - can be interpreted and enjoyed as purely aesthetic experience, on the other hand, the subject of those works are theoretic considerations working not at the level of visualisation but within the structure of the work.”

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Károly Pump’s pictures are presented in our gallery. “He was born in Baja, and studied photographing in Szekszárd, but the employed photographer, a resident in Germany since the mid-seventies, flashes pictures of the nature of dog’s life, about the domesticated predatory animal’s relationship to man which differentiates more the species than the physique or the dietary customs” – writes Sándor Bacskai in Dog’s perspective.

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“Although our series on circumstances in the Hungarian photo archives has been finished, the topic is far from being worked up” – Klára Szarka starts her article about the Collection of Hungarian Film Photographs. In some respect the collection of film photographs is a unique photo collection. The collection is stored and worked up in two locations, in the central building of the National Film Archive in Budakeszi street and in the rebuilt premises of the one-time clothes depot of the film studio in Róna street, where Magda Müller photographer is the manager of the department that preserves the photographing documents of Hungarian film production after the nationalisation of the branch.

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Organisers of the Dunaújváros Photo Arts Biennale made this year for the first time, wished to create a forum for one generation, for photo artists aged less than 35 years. “Just because e.g. the Esztergom Biennale and other monumental exhibitions are normally organised on thematic basis or along a kind of photographic way of looking at things; this time the organisers wished to provide an open path for photographic way of looking at things, for artistic attitude and technique” Zsófia Somogyi notes in her report Biennially, with you (?), just here again…

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In (Those) recalling the past and the magicians of the present Gábor Pfisztner reports on students graduating from the photographers’ faculty at the Moholy-Nagy University. The young photographers chose subjects providing the condition of making a photograph, based on a certain concept, under more or less settled circumstances. The photographers are IldikóDobay, Gergő Balaázs, Boglárka Juhász, Alida Kovács, Tamás Misetics, Tamás Prikkel Réthelyi, Márta Tóth and Ildikó Péter.

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In Aloofness Gábor Pfisztner reports on an exhibition – Viewpoints – selected from the pictures of three photographers of the VU’La Galerie in Paris. Richard Dumas one of the three, most devoted to traditions, makes his debut with portraits; Michael Ackerman aims for visualizing a mystical world with surrealistic, visionary, dreamlike pictures; Lorenzo Castores’ Cuban pictures depict obscure and vague forms, dim outlines and motives whisking away.

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György Szegő visited the commemorative exhibition of Bernard Rudofsky architect, photographer culture-critic. He reports: ”This second exhibition (of Rudofsky) in the AZ/Wien cannot repeat the re-velatory sensory effect of the first one, instead it rather represents the documents of the bequest made public only recently. And yet the photos seem to be suitable to present the ars poetica which the title hints at – “My photos do not set a model, just values” looking ahead and back at the same time, one can just hope to find an answer to the present daily questions.

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Zoltán Fejér reports on the exhibition of Nicolas Crispini Swiss photographer. It took Crispini three years to make the series of black-and-white photos – Rivers and riverbanks in the Geneva basin. “What would be if…? What kind of works would they make if their way of living were less exploiting, their environment and neighbourhood more to-lerable? For three years we would walk around their homes step by step, looking for the crystal-clear water, and the ideally rippling waves, like Nicolas Crispini…?, the Hungarian author asks.

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In The melancholy of the Middle-Eastern smile György Szegő reviews the Israeli “Hungarian” Paul Goldman’s press photos made over the period of 1943 to 1961: “By now, forty years after the turn of the war in 1967, one can probably say: the country that is not only the country of the history of salvation but also a country playing a role of key importance in modern history, lives the era of somewhat conso-lidating Utopia. The exhibit selected from Paul Goldman’s forty thousand pictures transmits a kind of diminished time. One can spot the enormous efforts of a visionary society for the everyday certainty of the tangible existence.”

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Those who know Endre Schwanner photo artist, author of Fotóművészet, also know his close relationship to the Hungarian motor sports that used to be extremely popular for several decades after WW II. That world bygone for ever for certain, comes to life again on his photos Motorists anno…

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The title of Zsuzsa Farkas’s essay is The beginning of photographing structures from 1840 to 1885 in Hungary. One short passage from it: “Between 1840 and 1860 the Pesti Műegylet donated engravings to its members, and one of them was made by photogravure. Among the engravings published over the period of 1861 to 1885 by the next association of fine arts – the Hungarian National Society of Fine Arts – a number of photographic reproductions can be found. At the beginning even local newspapers reported on the photoprints of the Hungarian structures exhibited in Pest, their repute used to be such an important public affair.”

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The topic of the latest part of József Rák’s series DigiTREND, is the UVIR versions of the digital SLR cameras of FujiFilm, “extended in spectral sensitivity” that can be used in the UV and IR radiation ranges, as well.

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The starting point of Zoltán Fejér’s essay – Light-chasers – is Gyula Juhász poet who wrote poems about Manci Bäck photographer in Szeged, in one of his short poems he uses the term “light chaser”. “This is what photographers make with the light – the author points out – i.e. they keep chasing the light. They are chasing it, then they want to set bounds to the light by means of their sophisticated or shockingly puritan means, as well as with their chemicals of complicated composition that would confused even an alchemist.

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