Summary - 2016/3.
Vol. 2016/3. of Fotóművészet begins with an interview made by Sándor Bacskai with press photographer András D. Hajdú, I am interested not in extremities but in the brutality of everyday life: “ My basic principle is not to get anyone in trouble. But at the same time it makes me things difficult, because if I want to speak of poverty truthfully, then I have to point out that children are starving, they are living under bad conditions, there is no water, no heating, and in this case the public guardianship authorities ought to take actions. From this point of view my series are not entirely truthful because there is a bound I don’t go beyond because doing so I would involve families into danger. Nevertheless we have to talk about that many children get food only once a day and the food is not of proper quality.”
In Pictures and pixels | Fotóművészet – and beyond it | Nemzeti Szalon (National Exhibition Hall) 2016 Mihály Surányi reports on this event: “It was not an ordinary exhibition hall show in the sense that one could not apply for participation, and not a multi-member body judged the exhibits sent in. I would rather call it a curator exhibition, where the appointed curator invited artists based on his/her own viewpoint system. I believe it to be natural that selecting and organising – even in the case of a one-man show – reflect the approximation of the organiser. Finally, the exhibition was put together from more than 700 works of more than 150 artists.
In Guided groupings Rita Somosi reviewed Dorottya Vékony’s works: “She is not absolutely committed to the photo but this is the primary medium she works with. Playful imaging, humour play an important role in her works while in the meantime questions of self-recognition and self reflexive as well as individual identity are recurring in her work. In recent years she has been examining the linking points among people, namely based on which viewpoint system can factions come into being within society if it excludes selection based on evidence (such as sex, religion, race), and it creates deliberate or random relations based on an external principle?”
In People coming from far away Péter Tímár reports on the “début” of seven South-Korean photo artists in Budapest: “An Asian could possibly become easier European than the other way around, but perhaps at least we are able to admire respectfully the magnificence of the culture hardly accessible to us knowing the distances behind what we have seen. At present the trend is not this, whereas it is the only right direction. The mission of these pictures is not to let us get to know South Korea through them but to make us intrigued to know more about the country, the people and its culture.”
Judit Gellér reports on the Lódz´ Fotofestiwal organized for the fifteenth time this year: “The organiser team presented “New Routes of faith” series dealing with spirituality and reality of Adél Koleszár photo artists usually dwelling on marginal topics, in section Discovery. The young photographer who graduated from MOME with MSc degree, left with a scholarship two years ago to Mexico a city infamous for high crime rate. Her studies were focused on marginal social groups, and this way she started to integrate as sort of cultural anthropologist into the Mexican milieu.
In Leaving mark Rita Somosi presents the diploma works of nine students graduating from the faculty of photographing of the Moholy-Nagy Art Academy. As she points out, photo series differ a lot of each other, it would not be easy to highlight a marked direction or aspiration, but at the same time more than one photo artist are inspired by the problems of the way of seeing things which visualise social and cultural problems mixed with documentary or narrative means. The graduates and their diploma works are: Enikő Hodosy: Invisible you; Mátyás Krista: Cut; Tamás Páll: ArbVau Network; Bianca Gombár: NOTHING IS OK; Kristóf Generál: Józsefváros Originals; Milán Rácmolnár: Recurrance; Soma Rétfalvi: Pack; Bernadette Fehér: Exitus.
Gábor Pfisztner’s series tries to investigate the relationship between photo and contemporary art: Examples mentioned in his article are probably enough to outline where is the fundamental fault line between which we come across nowadays mostly as “photo art” [or something similar], and that for what Osborne used the notion of post conceptual art as contemporary art, by which notion he made an attempt to seize what he believes to be the fundamental characteristic of contemporary art.”
Moreover Gábor Pfisztner reports on Thomas Struth’s exhibition – Nature & Politics?: “According to the exhibition leaflet 37 large photos present the visual world of industrial plants, factories, research laboratories, hospital theatres, as well as ordinary buildings and adventure parks to the visitors. In recent years Struth wanted to examine by his photos first of all how human will, ambition and imagination create »stereoscopic and objective reality« by means of complex systems and constructions.”
Anne Kotzan reports on Arles 2016: “Meetings in Arles are fundamental events of the annual programme both for experts and for the enthusiasts of photography. It has been the forty-seventh time this year of organizing this illustrious event – and the second year of staging it under the management of the new director Sam Stroudzé. The small provincial town merged into a single light phenomenon under the dazzling bright blue sky, which had fascinated Van Gogh so much. The centre of the festival was again in the Cour Fantom, while Parc Ateliers – the onetime railway station – served as venue for most diverse exhibitions.”
György Szegő visited the exhibition Zoom! Architecture and townscapes’ in the Vienna Architekturzentrum: “Several hundred photos from the most different geographic and cultural environments show what kind of aggressive changes result from franatic (town) growing craze. The most interesting »constats« are contrasts where the »old« still works in the shadow of the »new«. But as the visitor – like a giant crossing continents with a few steps – is able to orientate in the installation above symbolic continents of the exhibition, it becomes an experience if the photographer is talkative, who doesn’t condense, or doesn’t compress contradictions in one single picture.”
György Sümegi interviewed Anders Engman photographer about his visit in 1956 in Budapest: “Many asked the question: Who is this reserved gentleman wearing a hat and sitting on a tripod chair in the middle of Nagykőrút (Grand Boulvard in Budapest), making sketches with a composed look in the chaos? Who is this man on Anders Engman’s photo taking sketch-snapshots about the havoc under unusual circumstances?
In her two-part essay – In defence of the authenticity of historical photographs – Katalin Jalsovszky discusses the problems of archiving and publishing Hungarian holocaust photos via concrete examples: “Although doctoring or technical manipulation of photos or providing them with false data is of the same age as photographing, the frequency of failures, mistakes, distortions made in good faith not with deceptive intention are much more. Sometimes failures can be traced back to false information given by the photographer, but the source of information can be found with the owner or institution keeping the photo in its physical reality, with the archive empowered to sell the photos or with the medium publishing it.”
Zoltán Fejér’s photo-historical article presents a camera manufactured for about five years by German manufacturer Plaubel: “”It was in 1920 that Hugo Schrader started to sell Plaubel Makina I camera with picture format larger than previously, using 6,5×9 cm cut film or roll film with roll cartridge. The camera was fitted with Compur shutter. But the real success was the 10 cm Anticomar with 2,9 aperture.”
Excerpt from the second part of Attila Montvai’s series “How many megapixel had Michelangelo’s hammer? Or is photo technology a creator instrument?”: “ Don’t forget that only a picture made onto film and enlarged directly on silverhalides-base can be called »analogue« photo. As soon as the film is scanned and then the photo file is printed, this designation lapsed, since optical mapping and analogue-digital conversion is needed! The fact that the neighbour’s cat or a negative is in front of the mapping system is indifferent.”
New albums on Péter Tímár’s Bookshelf: It’s just a play – Film legends; Endre Kovács: Vizafogó 1968, Momentary amnesia – Budapest 1966–1974 and Notes not in chronological order (Three volumes in one box): Annie Leibovitz: At Work; Edward Weston’s California Lanscapes; Katalin Jalsovzsky – Emőke Tomsics – Zsuzsanna Toronyi: Illustrated History of Hungarian Jews; Zsuzsanna Demeter – Ilona Balog Stemler: János Müller (1870–1928) – Press Photographer of Budapest in war.
