SUMMARY

In the first article in the 2011/1 issue of Fotóművészet Sándor Bacskai interviews Tamás Dobos photographer. It is not the first time that this magazine presents a film-maker having deep interest in photographing. Let’s, for example, mention Péter Gothár, Sándor Sára or István Gaál. Tamás Dobos is a bit different; he had been a professional, a “genuine” photographer before getting interested in film making. In our opinion he was photographer even then when he was shooting films like Nibelung-residential park or Apaföld (Father’s land). And of course, no doubt, still he is a photographer.

The article Goodbye Winter is about István Halas’s pictures – Három-azegyben (Three into one). “István Halas’s question is, how can a portrait be made without having the one to be portrayed, on the picture; whether is the picture capable of depicting, of portraying the character without the leading person? Can a person be identified by means of the mark, the impression of a country, of a city or of the world? You are faced with triple pictures where the quotation is another picture … István Halas has photographed a place where the houses were not to be found.” The article is completed by an interview made by Zsuzsanna Kemenesi.

In The photographs of absorption Virág Böröczfy presents Ákos Czigány. This young photographer – far from having established himself – won in 2010 the Lucien Hervé and Rodolf Hervé Prize, one of the highest international appreciations of his generation. His latest series of pictures – Heavens (homage a` Hiroshi Sugimoto) represents photographer’s mentality in the classical sense. “It seems as if earth is having a dialogue with heaven as a result of which different patterns of the light penetrating, lighting the material can become visible.”

In The master of tones János Dozvald reviews Péter Horváth’s photo exhibition Squaring of the picture. “His matrices suggest Horváth’s playing two-directional game: on one hand, he is searching for the true and false features of the social surface of the life of man. Apparently, he is disturbed by that the surface of visible is swarmed with frailties, contradictions, doubts relating the destiny and order of things.”

In To wash our face in someone else Zsófia Somogyi writes about Lilla Szász. “Lilla Szász is photographing people, what is more, groups. People who have been made to become a group by the circumstances, constraints, difficulties; their belonging to NOWHERE; being on the periphery – depending on the attention given by society or the social ladder. Lilla Szász is attracted by marginal situations in which she deeply submerges herself, gets dissolved; sometimes she even disappears to the extent of a few shots.”

In his four-part series Gábor Pfisztner reviews contemporary photo art. “All the indications are that photography has not come to an end. It is also evident that by now contemporary photography is different of what it used to be a couple of decades ago. No doubt, there are fields where changes are far from being that marked as elsewhere e.g. in the case of works marked as photography in contemporary art. Here, however one is encountered by embarrassing diversity, and accepts with reluctance to call all forms of contemporary photo art photograph even if this definition is right from the point of view of technique.”

Both Anne Kotzan and Zsuzsanna Kemenesi have reported on the Paris Photo 2010 fair. 106 exhibitors (galleries and book publishers) as well as more than thousand artists from twenty-five countries participated and 38 000 visitors were registered at this event held for the fourteenth times last November. The press reported on the exhibits in high terms. Central Europe which was represented by galleries and artists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia, were in the limelight of the program.

Zsuzsanna Kemenesi reports on the Lens Culture FotoFest 2010. Lens Culture is a Paris-based international online photo magazine, and FotoFest International is a nonprofit international organisation of photo art with its headquarters in the US. 170 photographers from about 32 European, American and Asian countries met with 48 reviewers.

György Szegő sent a report on the 21st Pozsony Photo Month. Among many others the following exhibitions could be visited at the event: Slovak photography 1990–2010, Marcos López: Grotesque, Péter Pettendi Szabó: Have ever visited Budapest? Anna Fabricius: Knights and Horsewomen. The author reported in detail on shows like The history of Russian photography 1840–1950, František Drtikol in the archives, the Official Slovak photography – in the shadow of the Third Empire (1939–1945) and Witkacy: Psychoholism.

In Photo Art and Fine Arts meeting at the table of legal protection of copyright Nóra Hepp lawyer lets us know definitely important information. In the first part of her series of articles she reviews legal aspects photographing works of art for reproduction, listing and interpreting relevant prevailing laws.

Hungarian Out, Hungarian photographers abroad – Károly Kincses’s paper. “The board of photography of NKA (National Cultural Fund) awarded a scholarship to my synopsis comprising the life and the more or less or not at all known career of more than five hundred ethnic Hungarian photographers living beyond the border. … It is important to me that they should not be forgotten.” In the first part of this series of articles Readers are given an overall picture of photographers like János Prihoda, Béla Rochlitz, Károly Semsey, Kornél Beniczky, Iván Szabó, Antal Országh, Károly Kornis, Pál Rosti, Balázs Orbán.

In An unknown acquaintance Béla Albertini publishes excerpts from a Károly Escher monograph in preparation. “Escher’s first signed picture was published in the weekly Film Szinház Irodalom early in 1940 … It is a press and photo historical curiosity that the picture, Lulu – the head of a puli (Hungarian shepherd-dog) in premier plan on a cover page photo –, was published paired with Angelo Lilli’s girl portray, as an example of the funny display of shagginess, with the title Before wave-setting.” n

Zsuzsa Farkas reports that on behalf of the Art Historical Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Science Professor Ern? Marosi awarded Opus Mirabile-Prize in the exhibition category to the four curators of the Borsos József exhibition in 2009 in the Hungarian National Galery; at the same time he awarded a critic-prize to the criticism of the exhibition.

György Gadányi selected pictures from the Escher Károly bromide oil prints in his photo historical collection. “After Karcsi’s passing away when sorting out his papers we found 45 bromide oil prints in pass-partouts cut out of drawing-paper in an old portfolio in a wardrope. His wife, Nelly, knew only that the prints had been made of his early pictures of his youth. At first sight the pictures made us believe they are the work of a master of mature age having steady hands.”

The title of the fourth, last, part of Attila Montvai’s series – A photographer about the photography – is I am me, you are you … the dynamics of photographic communication in contemporary binary culture. “The photographic picture as common value is the result of two interpretive acts markedly independent of each other, whose common aim is recognition. On the creator’s side it is as a matter of fact a destructive act, the aim of which is rendering facts not seen not realised so far, probable. However, on the receiving side the photographic picture is a fact integrating into the personal and the collective sphere.”

The subject of Zoltán Fejér’s article on the history of phototechnique is the pocket-watch-cameras; i.e. he has compiled the miniature or so-called spy-cameras popular mostly in English-speaking countries: Lancaster, Hegelein, Magic Photoret, Expo, Ticka and Kodak Instamatic cameras. “Complicated handling of devices only applies to recent time, not to designers active in earlier decades. They used to see/could see properly operating models time-honoured both in technological and commercial respect, in the pocket watch like miniature cameras and in their ‘peers’ of different design.”

The subtitle of part 12 of József Rák’s series – digiTrend – is About sensor-evolutions. “Apparently the pixel-war about the resolution of sensors at the start, has come to an end. By now most of the cameras have 10–12 Mp resolution which is much enough for general use. Naturally, improvements of models go on, there is always a demand for something new capable of providing more for the user.