SUMMARY – 2012/4.
First article in Fotóművészet vol. 2012/4 is Sándor Bacskai’s interview with photo artist Gyula Zaránd living in Paris. “I loved to live in Budapest, I loved the Hungarian countryside I used to travel. I wouldn’t have left the country if the brave demand for doing away with taboos had not turned into regression as a result of the ’68 events, which prevented me not only to evolve my abilities but it curtailed the personal freedom of my right to self-determination by enrolling me on the Marxist academy over my head. Parallel to it I got a passport. I had to ponder what would be the consequences if I agree or if I refuse to attend the school forced on me. I did not like the possible outcome either of them. In neither case could I have gone my own way, this is why I decided to leave.”
“Normantas Paulius’s picture of the cognate subject can be seen, interpreted as a comparative science – György Szegő writes in Wandering photographing. I mean of course disciplines consisting of picture axioms. One series of pictures was made in Radjastan, India, on the outskirts of towns, on semi-arid areas – seeing their tents – on the dwelling place of possibly stockbreeding nomadic families. Normantas Paulius made the other series of photos in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county in Hungary also in 2011. The latter ones show Roma people who had abandoned wandering life; they settled down, interiors, their living environment is the background. No environs can be seen on either of the photos.”
In The photographer’s story Gábor Pfisztner comments on György Stalter’s pictures made in Berlin and Budapest: “Neukölln and Józsefváros. Taking their social situation into account, it is not easy to compare the two of them, but the same refers to the series of tale-teller chronicler Stalter. Not as if anything would be wrong with it. Just to the contrary; here too, his expertise is combined with the same empathy as in Budapest. Because here too, he approaches everybody and everything with the same thing with which the former ones have to do – as he has always done, patiently and understandingly. But here the magic is failing. The world is waiting not for fairytales or lullaby.”
In Flux, philosophy, use of photo György Szegő reports on Endre Tót’s retrospective exhibition in the MODEM: “When on one of the photographs made in London Tót stamps his own silhouette picture (not unrelated to Che Guevara’s emblematic photo) on Cosey Fanny Tutti’s bottom, one can easily associate it with the lovely, iconic love-scene in Strictly controlled trains adapted on the screen by Jiri Menzel from Hrabal’s book, where the hero stamps Mása’s bottom in agony – »with very special pleasure«. (I am pleased to stamp, 1976) The same stamp in the other state of the performance appears in a delicate point of the co-author’s panties.”
In Subjective perspectives Rita Somosi presents the diploma works of nine students graduating from the faculty of photographing at Moholy-Nagy Art Academy in 2012. Meanwhile some of them are active players in the Hungarian contemporary arts life, with a number of exhibitions and appreciations behind them; some names may be known from the BA closing exhibition two years ago. Creators of the diploma works: Ildi Hermann, Éva Oravecz, Éva Szombat, Anna Gyurkovics, Donát Kékesi, Réka Szent-Iványi, Gábor Klina, Péter Zoltán Szabó, (Péter Pettendi Szabó) and Csilla Hódi.
Zsófia Somogyi reports on the comprehensive exhibition of Pécsi József photo art scholars – Enikő Hangay and Viktor Váradi: “The series of the two photo artists have an important common feature i.e. focusing on the matters of own life and own identity. Of course the way of presenting the »ego-images«, creating the idea of ego is made in very different ways.”
Anne Kotzan reports on events of Les Rencontres d’Arles 2012 i.e. of the Arles Festival existing for forty years: “this year Arles celebrated first of all itself, and the motto of this year – Une École Francais – represented very well, that this time the »French school« was in the focus. I wonder, if the desire to present sort of special photographic feature, a trademark has been behind it. The occasion was given by the 30th anniversary of the École Nationale Supérieur de la Photographie (ENSP).”
The hero of György Szegő’s article – From East – via West – to East is the Chinese Aj Vej-vej: “Aj Vej-vej proclaimed as the most influential contemporary artist of the world started his opposition cultural political artistic activity during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Authorities pulled down his architectural designing office. In 2009 he was beaten to a pulp in a lift. Finally with an air-ticket in his pocket he managed to land in Munich where his life was saved by an emergency brain operation. The scar of the operation on his enlarged portrait in the Ernst Museum communicates as a stigma with the visitor. Aj Vej-vej’s portrait became an icon, sort of contemporary biblical prophet, who redeems the world rushing into its destruction.”
In Descartes and Freud János Palotai reviews a book by Francois Soulages: Aesthetics of photography: “ Soulanges divides the aesthetics in the title into the aesthetics of fiction and print; into the aesthetics of pictures, transformations as well as of receptions impossible to complete; into the aesthetics of tragedy, depiction, composition; into the aesthetics of transmission, photomontage, reference, recording as well as that of the viewpoint. Finally, he divides up the photo into picture-pieces, the (sham) world into phenomena, and he »divides« further it into signs.”
Károly Hemző died at 85 on November 5 2012. Klára Szarka wrote an obituary about the photo artist known for his sports, town and food photos that were determinants influencing our way of seeing things.
Éva Fisli’s article – Robert Capa’s letter to André Kertész in 1938 – is the first part of a series, in which the author tries to make the public acquainted with the results of his research work in the André Kertész-archives in France.
Ferenc Markovics tries of unravel the relationship between the Kertész and Paula Wright: “Paula Wright’s postcards are dated from the early 1960s. Yet, should they arouse anyone’s interest in the person of the sender, one can hardly find any information about it. Surfing on the Internet you can find a video-interview by Loren Ellis made with the 100 years old Paula Wright in 1997. From this interview it turns out that she was born in Hungary as Weisz Paula.”
In “A fancied face in younger age” Daniel Borovi analyses the Use of Queen Elizabeth’s photographs made in her old-age: “a specific viewpoint of the examination of the fine-arts photo use is that while till the end of his life Francis Joseph used to model often and willingly for the painters and sculptors or for artists making model photos for a painting or a statue, in her last thirty years Queen Elizabeth never went to a photographic studio, neither was she willing to model to painters in the last twenty years of her life.”
A series of articles – Photographs in country collections – reports on the results of a project aimed at mapping the source-places – photographic collections in local museums, libraries, archives and church organisations – of the Hungarian photo culture and history. In the present part dealing with Zala county Tímea Bata reports on photographic objects found in the Göcsej Museum in Zalaegerszeg, in the Balaton Museum in Keszthely and in the Thúry György Museum in Nagykanizsa.
Photographing in the Dorottya Street in Pest-Buda is the title of Zoltán Fejér’s objective but also entertaining article rich in personal memories: “I am giving a few additional data to the photographic history of Dorottya Street in the 20th and 21st century. I am doing it because I was working for thirteen and half years for the Report Department of the Fővárosi Fotó Vállalat (Budapest Photo Company) in the building at number nine and eleven in Dorottya Street in which the company moved in 1951. (I have only second-hand information about the privatization of the company, about Porst’s entry on the scene and its reorganisation to Photo Hall). I was moved by the news that the last person having relation to the above list – Anna Banó Fisher (owner of Bápafi Bt.) – moved her shop from Dorottya Street in midsummer 2012, because with this saddening news after 151 years photography ceased to exist in Dorottya Streen in Pest…”
In Part 3 of a series of articles about scanners Attila Morvai is dealing with the following subjects: Technical data; Optical Density or Dynamic Range; Scanner-related MTF-data; Calibration of the monitor; Points of software post-processing; Scanning practice; Archiving; Display on WEB, High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) technology.
New Albums on Péter Tímár’s Bookshelf: Frank Gaudlitz: Casa mare; Report art/Rudolf Járai, Marco Grob/Hiepler, Brunier: Industrious; Endre Kovács: Málnás; Zoltán Póos: Állami Áruház (State Department Store) (Cultic objects of a bygone age); Joel-Peter Witkin – Zögling & Meister.
