SUMMARY – 2013/1.
Vol. 1/2013 of Fotóművészet starts with an interview – I speak all languages to my pictures – with Gyula Sopronyi made by Sándor Bacskai. “It has been a bodily pain to me to make a photo of a person unknown to me, not because (this way) I would steal his/her soul, and yet I felt it to be a too ‘intimate’ act. Later I learned press-photographing and I became practised at it, and I have got enough public-spiritedness to be interested in man. I wanted to photograph in any case. What would I photographed if I hadn’t worked for daily papers? – this, too, is a great question to me. I am not a writer, I am not able to put in words what I have in mind, I can express my opinion by a photo.”
In Spleenland Rita Somosi presents Gergely Szatmári’s photo series American Idler. “What should people do with their spare time? One way out is the world of sightseeing and entertainment. A multitude of entertainment-recreation centres, amusement parks have been built which relive us off this burden for some payment. But even if institutionalised entertainment does solve lots of problem, yet the attraction of the outside world is not necessarily strong enough to get us out of this state. Szatmári presents the feeble efforts of life getting schematic and of the way out of it.
In recent time two photo artists have processed their motherhood-related experiences.
Gabriella Csizek comments on Ildi Hermann’s photo series Our daughters: “Usually, young girls are preparing for their role in adulthood, or they are eager to show their original beauty or they hide themselves behind a grotesque mask. They are living so that they keep looking for their models, they are playing the role of whom they would like to become to, or they try to be similar and different to each other. Their unlikelihood lies not in their presenting themselves but it results from all the reality elements displayed on the pictures.
In We’ve come a long way, baby Alexa Csizmadia reports on Luca Gőbölyös’s photo series – Background: “You see an uncommon mixture of genre picture, portrait and self-portrait; as if it would sum up the centuries of culture from the Madonna portrayals to a Monet painting, to a woman hidden behind the burqa. The longer you are looking at the picture, the more metaphors reveal themselves. Luca Göbölyös is at the same time the actor and the subject of her pictures. She sets the scene in the centre of which she is standing. She specifies the locations, documenting - like a diary - her life full of journeys. Basis of her identity, her place in society is based on her mother artist ego.
In Losing face Péter Tímár comments on Balázs Máté’s pictures. “ Balázs started primarily from the “face losing” of his fashion photo models – not really make-up, hair-style, dresses, much more the standardizing power of the “World” created by the fashion-lifestyle-marketing is that hides the models’ character, dissolves their face. To illustrate it, the photographer gets to work on the models’ photo face but in this case the gesture of destruction –apart from a lyric photo reminding of a tulle veil – yields a different result.”
The topic of the article – PéldaKÉPek – by Klára Szarka is a series of photos made by Ádám Urbán of his masters and examples. “If someone wants to pay his respect to others, he should try to stay in the background. Not he should be at the centre! Ádám Urban used to do his work with due empathy, respect and patience. He remained almost unnoticed … soft lighting, perfect exposure, restrained range of colour, keeping due distance from the time-worn faces, but at the same time coupling creator with creation by means of the evidence of the photo for the spectator. Isn’t it enough? It is quite enough.”
In Natura non facit saltum Marcell Németh analyses Ákos Czigány’s series – Darwin Online – “Ákos Czigány is the man of books … he goes on reading even if he sees or takes a photo of something. This time early editions of Darwin’s works are in focus: the artist shows us systematically in tableau form pages left blank in the original printing but rewritten by printed pages in the course of time, by means of panel pictures.
In Looking at it in other way. Emergence of social sensitivity and human rights topics in contemporary photographing Zsófia Somogyi “scrutinizes Hungarian and international (photo) series and photos that put finger on socially sensitive topics, throw light on the problems of people at disadvantage or of minority groups, presents people with blank future.” The author supports her message with photos made by Béla Szandelszky, Dániel Kovalovszky, Zsolt Nyíri, Eric Heinitz, Tamás Hossala, Lilla Szász, Seba Kurtis, Graeme Miller and Susan Silas.
Beatrix Cs. Lengyel’s comprehensive study raises a monument to the memory of Iván Szabó Hungarian photographer who after the 1848-1849 freedom fight settled down in Scotland. “Scientists, teachers of the Madras College turned the interest of the poor Hungarian émigré language teacher to photographing … It can be taken for certain that over the period of 1851 – 1852 and in early 1856 he studied and worked in the studio of Thomas Rodger. Back in mid-1856 he moved to Edinburgh and opened his own studio. In the following two years he publicized his atelier in the southern part of Edinburgh, and he used to take part at the exhibitions of the Photographic Society of Scotland, moreover he was elected as honorary member of it at Prof. Brewster’s recommendation. At the first exhibition of the Society in December 1856, more than thousand photographs made with different technology were put on show, among others 16 portrays made by Iván Szabó.”
György Szegő visited the exhibition Vienna’s Shooting Girls. Jewish Women Photographers from Vienna. “When I would like to provide a cross-section of the exhibition, I cannot evade fate and fatelessness of women photographers escaping from the Nazism, including new success of successful émigrés achieved overseas or their disappearing from the scene, broken up families, divorces, widowhood, orphanage. The exhibition focuses on the memory of those massacred by the fascism. I would like to let people see how representatives of the new image world became nested into the new scientific/artistic world in social sense. But I am also going to list those, whose roots or life has Hungarian relations.”
Zoltán Fejér’s article deals with the best known photographic cabinet-making company in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, the Lechner-Müllert company in Vienna. “Wilhelm Müller took over the management of the company in 1888. In the following year first an amateur-teaching studio then a repair workshop managed by Josef Weidner was established. The photogrammetric measuring table designed by Baron Hübl, as well as the Lechner projector were manufactured in this repair workshop. The production of various products grew such huge dimensions which made necessary to build a large factory.”
In the latest part of Attila Montvai‘s series of articles about scanning the author points out: “The development of programs has a decisive part in the scanning process based on binary technology. To illustrate it, the demonstration of the visual quality achievable by devices in the mid-range section of the available hardware background, is the aim.”
