SUMMARY

The article Instant melancholy by Alexa Csizmadia is linked with the XVIII. Esztergom Photographic Biennial Polaroid exhibition. “What is this magic , that captivates so many photographers in Polaroid technique? – It’s hardly the immediate impression that fascinates the amateurs, much more the peculiar image quality: Hervé Guibert (Hervé Guibert, L’image fantome (Ghost Image) 1981) describes it a ghost image, as if we saw it through the filter of a dream; i.e. a kind of instant nostalgia, it transfers the image almost right at the moment of its creation into the resent past. This provides the impressive mood of the pictures, their accent, if you like. And, as by now the Polaroid has become a kind of historical curiosity, turning back to an older technique also highlights the version of nostalgia.”

“I love those of my pictures on which there is practically nothing particularly interesting, because I want to create pictures, and not to reproduce something, – says one of the most prominent photographers in Esztergom András Balla in an interview made by Sándor Bacskai. – I strive not for fascinating sights but for good pictures. I don’t know what to do with the nowadays fashionable, invented photos (…). I needed the cut film to have time – even two or three days – to think over what I want to photograph. But it took me eight years to make the picture ‘Adam’. On the other hand, to me digital technique is the same as motor-driven cameras used to be, you make a lot of shuts, some of them, for sure, would be good. By the way, it is not sure, if any of them would be indeed.”

In Silent fascination Ibolya Plank writes about Judit Szabó: “On Judit’s pictures some remarkable solutions have been found in regard of the basic dimension of photographing – and existence. First of all, I mean the photo of the boys playing football, where the exposure ought to have been made in a very very short time: three balls are flying at the same time in the air. What else can be “in the air? Well, a wide scale of pictures showing various moods, give proof of it, or those which hint at timelessness by specific combination of the person and of the environment of the picture.”

In Developing life-work Edit Barta provides more information to Vivian Maier’s (1926 – 2009) exhibition in Budapest. “In her way of looking at things one meets with William Klein’s sensitivity and lyricism, or Winograd’s persistence, or Cartier-Bresson’s humour, or the airiness and transparency of Kertész’s and Brassai’s compositions. Faces photographed by her sometimes turn in grimace, become screwed-up, nevertheless Maier would never go as close to her models as Arbus or Lisette Model do. While pull the subject closer, she is moving off it.

“After a long silence, Judit M. Horváth has come forward with a series of startling and staggering photos more personal usually not typical of her – Gábor Pfisztner comments on the Private photos in Pain closed in the Body. – The subject is not new, many people have recorded, documented their staying in hospital or a period of their illness (…) but Judit M. Horváth strived not to soften an apparently incomprehensible situation to a rational event, to a comprehensible, explicable thing, by means of the camera. What is more, while looking at the pictures it becomes more obvious that in the specific situation, by means of the camera, she tries to raise questions, which others, in similar situations, would try to suppress.”

In”Zoom in on, universe” András Bán reports on the exhibition Range-finder. Photographic works and viewing systems in the last fifty years in the Kepes György Art Centre in Eger: “It makes one to stop and reflect: The curator, the theoretic, the sociological, the historical or an aesthetic approach would be convincing under the circumstances defined by the time, the place and the state of the branch? Soon it becomes obvious - since it results from the curator’s field of interest - that the exhibition covers the last 50 years, and the exhibits have been selected from the works of prominent artists.” A few names from the long list of artists: András Baranyay, Zsolt Péter Barta, Zoltán Berekméri, György Boros, Péter Gémes, Béla Kondor, Endre Koronczi, Dóra Maurer, Lenke Szilágyi, Zoltán Vancsó, Alberik Vass.

Zsófia Somogyi’s article – Planet Display – deals with the exhibition of Thobias Fäldt, Klara Källström and Miklós Surányi in the Trafó Gallery: “For Hungarian visitors the recognition comes ‘to door’ where – in this case – Miklós Surányi’s photos are placed in the net of the international scene, both in stylistic and thematic respect – provided that the two can be separated from each other. The two prominent, internationally recognized Swedish artists, working both individually and together (KK+TF), and the Hungarian photographer use almost identical, well harmonizing, globally working and existing image world, and in these are presented their similar image creating intentions.”

In Roleplay Alexa Csizmadia reports on Natalia LL’s exhibition – Opus Magnum: “The Polish artist expresses herself by using mostly the language of photographing, nevertheless, strictly speaking she cannot be called a photo artist. Her ‘number one’ medium is the body, first of all her own body. Her Role-plays serve as basis for performances and photo performances, the latter ones seem as if they were single frame films directed by Natalia LL, and the lead is mostly played by her.”

Anne Kotzan sent a report on the Art Cologne art fair: “In 1967Hein Stünke and Rudolf Zwirner wanted to set up a new art center on the Rhineland to promote young German artists, and to involve them in the international art business (…) The initiators never dared to dream of such a great success, and they have never thought their idea would turn out to be an epoch-making event in the history of international arts.”

György Szegő visited the Head 2 Head. Politics and the Public exhibition in the Kunst Haus Wien: The exhibition scrutinizes the usual verbal manipulations of the election campaigns and their ways of persuasion by pictures, from 1826 (the first open presidential vote) to 2006. The show bestows seven case studies to the image building of Lenin, Che Guevara, Schwarzenergger, Timosenko, Mitterrand, Berlusconi and Bruno Kreisky, to their recurring election strategy, and six sections to the picture forms used in the campaigns.”

The second part of Béla Arbertini’s paper “The start of the press surge of ‘Hungarian’ photographing”, is published in this volume: “There is no question about it that the Trianon Treaty followed by revisionist intentions (both those induced by the imagined power and the peaceful ones) played a strong catalytic role in the development of ‘Hungarian’ photographing and in its becoming of mass dimensions, but not these constituted the main prompting; much more they came in very handy to strengthen an existing process (…) The fact that ‘Hungarian’ photographing – once bringing international success – became productive from social-cultural viewpoint, can be interpreted as an assimilatory success story starting from the end of the 19th century to the first third of the 20th century.”

In Terra incognita Károly Kincses writes about chemists Elek Vadász’s and Imre Nádas’s glass negatives presently in the ownership of the Báthori István Museum in Nyírbátor.: “He used to mix fever reducers for people from the town and from its neighbourhood, he served them with active coal and salt volatile, but if they had an peculiar face, then he ushered them through the house to the garden, and there as if by magic he created a photographic studio by means of a couple of devices right on the terrace or in a bushy part of the garden.”

In Photographs in country collections András Bán and Magdolna Szabó report on the findings of a project aimed at surveying the collections of pieces of the Hungarian photographic culture and history – namely photo collections in country museums, libraries, archives and church organisations. This part of the study reports on the collections at the Janus Pannonius University in Pécs and in the Kanizsai Dorottya Museum in Mohács.

Title of Zoltán Fejér’s article is A soft-focus lens: Verito is 100 years old. “Compared to the soft-focus and long (11 to 18 inches) focus, relatively low speed lenses designed to plate cameras of large pictures size, which had to be used together with colour filter, the Verito made soft-focus picture not because of keeping the difference in colour but the spherical difference (…) Users’ circle widened because thanks to the shorter focus (2 and 3 inches) Verito could be used to 35 mm cameras.

Sections of Attila Montvai’s article – Keep up with modern age, scan with the right method – are “Getting dusty” (storing) or start of a new age?; Arising theoretical problems; Hardware background; Various scanning methods.

New albums on Péter Tímár’s Bookshelf: Péter Horváth: Twilight zone; Zsolt Fekete: Photograph of the time (in the footsteps of Balázs Orbán and Ferenc Veress); Past of Baja in pictures from the 1840 fire to the end of World War II; Zsolt Hamarits: Parallel portraits.