SUMMARY
The first article in this issue of Fotóművészet is Sándor Bacskai’s interview with Barbara Gluck. Photo artist Barbara Gluck born to Hungarian parents in New York graduated from the school of communication arts at the New York University, and worked in advertising e.g. for the McCann Erickson agency. She went for the first time in 1967 to Vietnam, and co-vered the war among others for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Newsweek.“ ”I was determined to show (the world) the pain we were inflicting on this people, the damage we did in this country. I had no fear. Again, I felt I was fulfilling my destiny.”“Motivated by a sort of interest in culture-anthropology or social science, Levente Kádár and György Károlyi have decided to photograph the audience of the Sziget Festival” – György Jerovetz writes in Facebook as notion. “The idea of this series tries to cut a few Gordian knots in contemporary photo art; but just future can confirm the successfulness of this action.”In HÚStékozló (MEAT waster) Károly Grozdits interviews Árpád Fákó. “In the early eighties you had looked like someone beginning a successful career of great promises, but later it seemed as if you vanished from sight among the many hardworking ‘bread-winners’. Therefore you have been written off by many, although – as it is proved by the book Húshan-gok (Meat Sounds) – not the creator spirit, just the desire to appear in the public has been ‘turned down’. In the case of such an interdisciplinary work like this book, the book-reading public ought to hear of nothing else but of Fákó…”This year eleven students – Dóra Gunics, Kata Veisz, Tamás Juhász, János Fejér, Gergely Szuhay, Vivien Balla, Noémi Páhi-Fekete, Dorka Taskovics, Lilla Liszkai, Miklós Vargha, Barnabás Tóth – graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts. In Where to … Gábor Pfiszter reports on their degree works.In What is three years enough for? The first graduates who completed their BSc in photography Rita Somosi reports on the graduates in photography at the University of Kaposvár – Tamás Eiter, Dániel Fülöp, Orsolya Elek, Anna Viktória Pál, Karolina Kárász, Marcell Kriván, Bálint Somogyvári, Fanni Szilágyi and Einkő Várai, as well as on those graduating at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts – Anna Gyurkovics, Donát Kékesi, Éva Oravecz, Ábel Krulik, Árpád Horváth, Ádám Szekér, Emőke Kerekes, Zsófia Pályi, Éva Szombat.Zsófia Somogyi’s writing – Theoretical aspects of the personal photo. In concreto …is the third part of her research work done from 2007 to 2009 as winner of the Kállai Ern? art historian and art critic scholarship of the Ministry of Education and Culture. “After lots of theoretical discussions and spheres of thoughts it is time to examine how it would contribute to the analysis of specific works if we also watched who is looking at whom, what his/her eyes are fixed on, in what way it changes the one looking at the other and the one looked at?”In Herald of the light Péter Baki interviewed Andrea Bátorfi about her photographic installation and photo-animation film – Expanding – Two Worlds. “My works form an integral unit indeed. The metaphor of travel which I like to use for the exhibition is relevant just together with all stops of the route. To be able to become better and richer during a travel, one must be present with heart and soul as going on.”“In his series – Life with Maggie – Ofer Wolberger reflects a personality roaming around freely in time and space” – Zsuzsanna Kemenesi writes in her article – mese, mese (fiction, fiction). “Although Maggie does visit iconic historical sights, none the less she favours presentations she is able to identify herself with. She poses for them taking advantage of her personality, with a poker face and polished gestures which are completed by the environment so that it can come to life through colours, feelings and emotions.”“This side of the fairytails. Or beyond?” is the title of Gábor Pfisztner’s report on the exhibition of Danish contemporary photo artists – Torben Eskerod, Trine Sonergaard, Per Bak Jensen and Ebbe Stub Wittrup – in the Nessim Gallery and the Budapest Gallery. “What is it that keeps together the very different works of the four artists? The title of the dual exhibition Danish waves of light raises the question: What do we sense differently in this light that ought to appear in a different way, as these are specific Danish lights. Not the recipient, the photographer but the light is different which makes (things) visible.”In Photos in Kassel, in the home of documenta Anne Kotzan reports on the 3rd International Photo Album Festival. “The idea of staging such a festival came up first in 2008. But the organisers meant not the mass of albums focusing on spectacular well-known topics, but publications having the character of a work of art as artistic attitude. Undoubtedly, good publications had already been published earlier, as well, but the mania for colleting them is a relatively new phenomenon.”In Everything looks better by time Rita Somosi reports on an exhibition Exposed. Voyeurism, Surveillance & The Camera in Tate Modern. “The exhibition is divided into four thematic parts: The Unseen Photographer; Celebrity & Public Glaze; Voyeurism & Desire; Witnessing Violence; Surveillance. In each part the basic question is where is the boundary between the (photo) art and the applied photography, and would this way of judgement change by the time?”In Restart twice Klára Szarka presents László Várkonyi (1906 – 1975) press photographer. “Before 1945 both the political and the artist elite frequented his exclusively furnished studio in downtown Budapest. He photographed the wedding of István Horthy, and then after 1945 the ‘general staff’ of the communist party also went and stood in front of his camera. His personal fate is a painfully typical story of the history of the past century in Hungary: poverty, lots of work, success and threaten-edness, forced-labour service, hiding, repeated restarts, nationalisation, fleeing the country, another restart overseas.”The title of Zsuzsa Farkas’essay based on archival researches is “Who was the photographer of the King? “It is well-known that in 1888 Francis Joseph made a spectacular visit in Károly Koller’s lavishly furnished studio in Harmicad Street in Pest to have him photographed in several poses. Representative portraits had been made of the king by Hungarian photographer in 1869 and in 1872, then in 1892 and in 1899, too. But who was the photographer? What kind of rules regulated the making of photographs?”Zoltán Fejér’s “publicity campaign” makes Readers interested in visiting photokina in Cologne: “organisers expect 1300 exhibitors to participate at the photo show from 21st to 26th September, who would present their products and services to 150 000 visitors. The eight monumental halls present the exhibits in thematic grouping … According to information there will be one Hungarian exhibitor.”The title of another article by Zoltán Fejér, is Collecting Nikons. “ According to my experiences in the past decades collectors can be divided into two groups at least. One group is that of the typical empirical collectors: the man of empirically based knowledge. The other group is that of the theoretical collectors: the academic expert acting based on ideal-intellectual knowledge. If the empirical knows everything, then the theoretical knows it better.”The topic of the second part of Attila Montvai’s series – A photographer about the photography – is Capitalistic realism? Adobe obscura?. Section titles are The characteristic roles of photography, The development of the publishing and accessibility opportunities, Electronic culture: the secondary orality, Photography providing intellectual values and finally Where to in the future?New albums on Péter Tímár’s Bookshelf: Gergely Szatmári (Today’s Hungarian Photo Art – 7); Judith M Horváth: Deceptive Appearances / Simulacrum; Keith Carter: A Certain Archemi; Extreme Beauty in Vogue (based on the Dolce & Gabbana in Milan).
