SUMMARY 2011/02

The first article in the present issue of Fotóm?vészet is Sándor Bacskai’s interview with Balázs Gárdi press photographer: “I am a photographer, I make photos. I remain true to my original profession, even if I contract to make photos, I won’t do my work with less zeal just because I don’t feel them to be my personal matter … Of course, I approach differently to reports which I believe important for personal reasons. Many press photographers are too much dependent on the newspapers they are commissioned by, and many times this fact forces them to give up their principles. Knowing that, I am unable to cooperate with anybody. Perhaps this is the reason why I have created myself an alternative form of existence ideal to me: I accept a commission only from those who surely won’t influence me in any way, and, of course I accept to do the work provided that it does not go against my principles: I don’t propagate information that are opposite to my mentality.”

In What you see now, that does exist indeed Zsófia Somogyi comments on Zoltán Molnár’s photos: “One of the roles of key importance played by black and white colours on his photos is that they take the scene out from the space and the time surrounding us, routinely used and lived through by us; and it has a lot of consequences; e.g. it gets more distant from the viewer i.e. something that is otherwise heartrending, can be viewed longer. Each time you look at it, it is heart breaking.”

György Szegő went to see Péter Lajtai’s photos: “He photographs Jewish ri-tual objects, and he manipulates the pictures. He puts prayer shawl-textures, cices-fibres, X-ray-like anthropomorphic of menorahs, buds of trees on the slide of his imaginary microscope. Lining them up, he reveals possible associations. He arranges the pictures and he lists them with numerical titling.”

Klára Szarka is the author of Péter Herendi’s rigorous world: “With Herendi the base, dimensions, installation of the final work, more than once neither the positioning on the exhibition wall, are incidental. All are aimed that the recipient, as well, can exactly decode the “problem”, and the idea leading to it, too; as well as he can understand – in my view – still the photographer’s basic position.”

János Dozvald reviews the pictures (by Orsolya Juhász, Bálint Álovits, Dorottya Vékony, Gabriella Ottucsák, Donát Kékesi) of the József Pécsi then and now paraphrase competition: “It would be more fortunate if this game were a study somewhat more narrowed down for the young participants of the competition. Of course, this time those worthy for the exhibition, are mostly grown-up people in their twenties, very much interested in and committed to their profession and its cultural background. In regard to their revealed connection points with József Pécsi’s works, one could say, a bit exaggerated, that no two of their motivations are alike. Greater part of them has respect for József Pécsi, and they understand what the reason is for it. Some of them are insensible to the great forebear, they would prefer to favour other ideals within the framework of such a game, and yet they managed to create something worth for putting on the wall.

In his series planed to consist of four parts, Gábor Pfisztner scrutinizes contemporary photo art. The subtitle of Part 2 is Let’s call a spade a spade: “If you want to map the today’s outward form of photography woven into the texture of contemporary art, the suitable way is to take an entirely different system of aspects into account. In this way the relation between the world visible on the picture and the world experienced, as well as the relationship between the function of the picture as “picture body” and the presented world, the status of the picture as object (base, medium etc.) can again become important. The medial character of the photo i.e. as malleable, pliable material or picture body is also significant.”

Edit Barta’s article – Decadent weekdays – deals with South African Billy Monk: “His players are not people living an ordinary average life. They are sailors saling on the sea, having a mistress in every harbour; prostitutes to whom real life starts at nightfall; and apart from them so many figures of nightlife: criminals, bar owners, men and women seeking entertainment, adventurers. Monk has been documenting their every day life, the reality; he himself has also been a share in it.”

György Szegő’s article – the Witkacy: Psychoholism – is linked to the Pozsony Photo Month : “His panpsychism faith could provide the dignity so much typical of his photos, which makes him capable of bridging the gap between the photographer and the subject of the photograph by means of an image dialogue with himself. He has been able to sublimate his own exhibitionisms and egocentrism to quality creativity in several artistic forms. At the same time he has been able to meet the criteria of both professional and amateur photographers, but he is also a both extroverted and introverted personality.”

In Consequences of the breach of copyright – how can authors enforce their copyright? Dr Gabriella Kovács lawyer supplies very important information about the subject. “The most serious cases of the breach of copyright are qualified as infringement crime in terms of the law. Someone commits infringement if he/she represents an author’s work of someone else as his/her own work hereby causing pecuniary loss to the beneficiary… Authors have lots of possibilities for administration of justice, they can resort to litigat-ion in the case of infringement of copyright or they can resort to the means of criminal law against the culprit.

Hungarian out. Hungarian photographers abroad- is a series of papers by Károly Kincses. In this part the prominent photo historian reviews various periods of emigrations: “Although, I am seemingly talking about the history of photographing, one should not be so much sure about it. During my research work I have come across lots of other oddness. Is there e.g. any reasonable explanation for it, or is it only the juncture of chances that within a circle with a radius of about 300 km, between 1896 and 1913, i.e. in fifteen years, five or six internationally well-known photographers were born in the (Austro-Hungarian) Monarchy, to be more exact, in Hungary? And furthermore, anyone could be interested in why was it quite normal that all of them left Hungary, and they could become world-famous only abroad?”

Zsuzsa Farkas publishes a paper on Károly Szathmári Pap born in Kolozsvár and deceased in Bucharest, known most of all as the photographer of the Crimean War. ”The artist falling best into the category of painter-photographer preferred by me, was an excellent painter, draughtsman and photo artist, who practised those three artistic professions both together and in parallel. The role he played in the Rumanian royal court elevated him to a very high position… Szathmári’s bequest is part of the Rumanian arts. The Museum of Arts in Kolozsvár preserves a number of his oil-paintings and drawings; his works are put on show in a separate room in the Museum of Arts in Bucharest.”

László Pusztai has started a new series – Treatment of colours in practice: “Once we are dealing with digital image processing (let it be scanning and printing of analogue pictures or a completely digital working process), treatment of colours cannot be disregarded. The question is whether it is done in the right way or not. Aim of this new series of articles is to go into the theory needed to understand the whole question, and then to give practical advises to photographers that help them to be at home in the world of treatment of colours.”

The title of Ilona Balog Stemler’s article is Károly Escher’s restorations prior to the Pet?fi daguerreotype: “I started studying the relationship between the Hungarian National Museum and photo artist and his photos in the Archive of Photographs on the inspiration of the Escher Károly Commemorative Committee founded on the 120th anniversary of his birthday. From a document, I came across, and then from other documents, as well, it turned out that in 1953 Escher restored not only a single daguerreotype prior to that of Pet?fi but two more, and again from the documents it can be found out which were those daguerreotypes.”

In Pictures for large format, Talbot and Bayard, Thornton and Pickard, Voigtländer and Petzval Zoltán Fejér writes: ”Petzval mixed creative genius with weighing sober realities and with realising them in time. He has found: nobody would force him to do a design work the result of which is a lens made of one single lens part that can be used for two entirely different purposes and therefore, with very different design. Thereafter, based on his calculations, with Voigtländer and Anton Martin they designed the model of the fast portrait objective, as well as the first experimental camera.”