Summary - 2016/1.

Vol. 2016/1 of Fotóművészet begins with an interview made by Sándor Bacskai with photo artist János Eifert. In the interview – Photographing is not the art of instant – He tells: “I took the job of being the chairman of the Association of Hungarian Photo Artists very seriously. It was during my holding this post, that the office in Báthori street was liquidated, the library and the collection were moved away what involved lots of work. In early 1998 we organized the 1st Week of National Photographing modelled on the Paris Mois de la Photo. 124 exhibitions, book reviews and workshops were organised on 78 sites, without any government subsidy. The Museum of Applied Arts was the main site of the event which was the place of display of contemporary photography, where representatives of the First Creative Community, the Studio of Young Photographers and those of other contemporary art schools were present.”

In Confrontations Gábor Pfisztner covers an other's exhibition – Judit M. Horváth Private pictures: There is one picture in the photo series, that was made not by Judit M. Horváth, but, just like previously, neither in this case does it have any significance who operates the device, at the end of the day. So, there is this photo: two women, mother and daughter, their foreheads touched, their faces very close to each other; they are linked with each other, not emotionally, not conceptually – here, at this moment, these are suspended, put in parentheses – and nor thanks to some kind of invisible energy flow, but in the original, the (initial) most original way: in their body.

In Quiet melancholy. The relationship between post industrial scenery and the subjective nature view Rita Somosi reviews photo series of Gáspár Riskó: “While the Dead point is a more general, documentary like research, the Dividing line leads to the Counter-balance which would rather constitute the visual parallels of internal states. Starting from the Dead point the perspective gets ever narrower: while there the emphasis was on the sphere of thought of solitude, of evanescence transmitted by impersonal spaces, the pictures of Counter-balance can be regarded as visual projection of moods. This process continues on Riskó’s recently made photos. His aim is not to observe or to record something but to create actively those phenomena that transmit his mood.”

In 3 Gink János Palotai reflects on Sára Gink’s exhibition – Memotherapia III: “Media artist Sára Gink presents her relationship to the legacy of the grandfather Károly Gink and Judit the textile artist mother, in three stages. Simultaneously could be seen the intensive standstill of her earlier photos, the still picture, the dramatic power of the retarding, which culminates in the three-channel video-installation like in a triptych, and the pictures until then silent, suddenly regain their magic power by the sounds.”

Judit Gellér reports on Máté Bartha’s and Michal Grochoviak’s exhibition – Swing: “It seems as if they regard the whole world as a vast playground, from which, by picking out parts, they would create a dreamlike surreal world working separately. Their pictures – practically taking off reality, yet staying on the ground of reality – take form from very much overly real elements picked out of the world of everyday life, by means of the medium of photography related to reality, in which any moment can become suitable that suddenly someone or something finds itself on the board of an odd board game.”

Apropos an exhibition in the Budapest Art Gallery György Szegő introduces the American Steve McCurry: “It makes you to reflect on what his secret is. He doesn’t make traditional report-portraits; to make a photo means to him to get to know, to understand, to come to like something. Moving on the ground, personal connection with the »subject« brings with the understanding. To see, to let see destroyed homes, the missing men not be found, the tragedy of the community of lonesome women and children in refugee camps: it can make one wise. But »to be able to stroke« the sufferer of the Diaspora life, so that finally the Readers of magazine see the man and not the subject of the photo of an artist, an exceptional artist ability is needed.”

Apropos the exhibition Picture tactics. Makó Graphic Art Colony 1977 to 1990 in the Ludwig Museum, Krisztina Üveges introduces the Readers to the Hungarian history of photo-based graphic procedures: “Starting from the seventies more than one experiment have been made with the photo-based procedures. The first comprehensive exhibition that processed the new relation between fine arts and photography, was the Exposure, Photo/Arts organised by László Beke and Dóra Maurer in 1976. The contemporary critiques fully felt the importance of it, in the review of the exhibition István Hajdú regarded the photo expressively as a means of fine arts.”

János Palotai reports on the exhibition of Danish photo artist Lars Schwander: “Earlier, the background of his photos used to be more neutral, but by the time they became more expressive, having a meaning, the soft contours of the body and the sometimes geometric rigidity of the environs are in contrast. Background has always been important in the photographer’s life, not even today does he deny it.”

In 101 films – A look at America – Anne Kotzan introduces Belgian photographer Herman van den Boom: “One can see definitely explicit parallels between the new American landscape conception and the photos of the young Belgian photographer. The differences are striking only in technical sense. His photos are often grainy, and the sharp contrasts are typical. The reason of it is that he did not have a Hasselblad camera like his contemporaries used to have, he worked with a Nikon miniature camera without tripod, sometimes with red filter in order to create the effect of the »American night«”.

In Onion-skins. The layers of the Capa-photo collection Beatrix Cs. Lengyel and Éva Fisli report on the actual stage of the Robert Capa – research: “As we, Hungarian scholars, have to deal more profoundly with the time of Endre Friedman’s life in Hungary, we believe that looking for information about his latest activity e.g. in Italy, is not our task. We could only make the first steps by staging the exhibition presenting the pictures made in Italy and making public the catalogue. Nevertheless, even data brought to light this way are significant, and we believe, it would encourage others, as well, to deal with the Hungarian-born photographer’s pictures made in Italy, with their history and with placing them in context.”

The subject of Béla Albertini’s series of articles is László Moholy-Nagy’s publications in German illustrated magazines. This time the forth – and at same time the last – part dealing with the years 1921 to 1935 is published in this issue. “If just Moholy-Nagy’s articles published in the above mentioned German illustrated magazines are dealt with here – completed with a couple of articles published in other countries, even if we don’t try to extend the horizon on the whole of his life’s work – it becomes obvious that the artist published a great number of his subjects in at least two versions. Even if not in that marked way, we can still be witnesses’ of a similar phenomenon, if we study Moholy-Nagy’s photography related writings, theoretical ideas. Variations here and there – everywhere.”

“Despite the fact that the British W. H. Fox Talbot belongs to the first invertors of photographing, historians of photography have dealt unfairly little with his photographing devices”– Zoltán Fejér points out in his article about the history of photographing technique – Tabot’s camera. “Since he worked isolated, alone, he was first to discover a lot of things. By now listing and making public those things fill up dozens of volumes. This time I would refer to that Niépce and Daguerre made mostly landscape-oriented pictures and compositions. Talbot, however, applied both landscape-oriented and still pictures, and on top of it even square and irregular picture formats. His standing prism-shaped camera was definitely the precursor of the simple box cameras.”

Four albums on Péter Tímár’s Bookshelf: The liberty of past – selection from Róbert Alföldi’s photo collection; Imre Benkő: Horizon (panorama photo essay 1997 – 2015); Richard Széman: Picture news from the outskirts of Budapest (Suburbs local history booklets); Emőke Tomsics: Atlantis of Budapest – Transformation of downtown Pest at the end of the 19th century.