SUMMARY– 2020/3
András Bán: László Haris–The structure of a life-work
László Haris (1943) consistently claims to be a photographer. His oeuvre spans the second half of the 20th century. He has explored many areas of photography as an autonomous artist and his pictures include spiritually motivated abstract works as well as digital experiments. He is an unavoidable figure of the great generation that renewed the thinking about Hungarian photography in the 70's. András Bán writes about how to see this diverse life-work in unity, where its boundaries are and yet what connects them
Zsófia Somogyi: The power of context–Cohesion forces among the works of Ágnes Eperjesi
Ágnes Eperjesi’s name cannot be ignored, if you want to list the most important artists in the field of contemporary Hungarian photography. In her paper, Zsófi Somogyi undertook to give an overview of her oeuvre, which is shaped by disciplined thinking, the desire to experiment with the visual sciences and the need to respond to social challenges at the same time. She does all this by filtering through her personal existence, sort of distilling the images. Although several writings have been published about the works of Eperjesi, the article of Zsófi Somogyi differs in that it examines the internal connections between the elements of her work.
Judit Gellér: Photo Books. Conversations. III–You are here by Tibor Gyenis:
Tibor Gyenis' book was published by the Hungarian Museum of Photography. Judit Gellér talked to him on this occasion. How can you edit a photo book? How to adapt to the format? Of course, there is a lot of talk about the background of each series at the same time.
Gábor Ébli: Contemporary art should not be reassuring–Photo-based works in Judit Reszegi’s collection
The image of a collection develops gradually. Nodes are crystallized after the first purchases. The collection reflects the collector and the collector chooses more and more carefully to shape the image of the collection to what s/he expects of her/himself. Gábor Ébli's article allows this process to be seen in connection with Judit Reszegi's collection and thus he also allows an insight into the relationship between a gradually becoming international collection and its collector
Balázs Zoltán Tóth: The condition of post-photography
It is hard to imagine due to the globalization of digital networks and the many images that come before our eyes, but the concept of post-photography emerged nearly 30 years ago. Some theorists already distinguish different periods within these thirty years. Zoltán Balázs Tóth gives an analytical summary of the competing parallel theories that define and describe post-photography.
Zopán Nagy: Photo-paintings, shapes, engravings…–Péter Herendi's exhibition „Geo Graphy”
The raw material for Péter Herendi's new series came from satellite imagery. However, the raw material turned into something completely different and special. Zopán Nagy’s poetic writing by about Péter Herendi’s works.
Zopán Nagy: Intro- and extroversions–About Enikő Gábor’s photogram series
Enikő Gábor is researching the world of photograms very consistently and we could already see her photo sculptures earlier. Zopán Nagy was also captured by the pure world of the material of her exhibition „Introversion”.
Štĕpánka Bieleszová: František Drtikol (1883–1961)
It would be difficult to imagine the Czech avant-garde without František Drtikol. Relying on the material of the Museum of Olomuc, Štkapánka Bieleszová’s article introduces the reader a bit to the work of the photographer. The article also covers Drtikol's contradictory relationship with women and also touches on Drtikol's relationship with Buddhism in connection with the images.
Zsuzsa Farkas: Hungarian private collectorsA Conversation with István Fodor
In this issue, Zsuzsa Farkas talks to István Fodor about the development of his collection. Of course, the conversation revolves around the more interesting and unique pieces of the photo collection.
Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszákí: American Cabinet Cards in the Limelight
In American Cabinet Cards in the Limelight, Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák reviews the Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s exhibition catalogue Acting Out. Cabinet Cards and the Making of Modern Photography (August 15–November 1, 2020). The catalogue, which in addition to an introduction, consists of four essays and over 200 illustrations, provides a lengthy but perhaps less broad survey of this common form of late nineteenth-century portrait photography than one would expect from an undertaking which hails itself to be the “first major museum exhibition dedicated to cabinet cards”. Great emphasis is laid on the curious, theatrical, often humorous examples, while the selection appears to disregard the less dramatic varieties which continued the tradition of the cdv and which were presumably just as widespread. One of the main theses of the editor, John Rohrbach, is that learning how to ‘act’ in front of the camera during the cabinet card craze constituted an important step leading to the age of the Kodak Brownie and snapshots. Describing the cdv form of the 1860s as ‘summative statements’, Rohrbach argues that in cabinet cards, portraiture shifted to providing ‘momentary diversion’.
Anne Kotzan: Portraits of Modernity – Berenice Abbott
The Fundacion MAPFRE organised an exhibition to present the oeuvre of Berenice Abbott in Köln with the SK Stiftung. The curatorial team intended to show her works from the early years in Paris to her retirement. The exhibition presented her as one of the firsts who discovered the visual power of the modern city. The rapidly changing New York was her first great project after her return in the US. Later she turned to science, and she concentrated her efforts to define physical notions with the tools of the photography.
Zoltán Fejér: The camera of the economic miracle
The subject of Zoltán Fejér's article, the Finetta camera family was developed in the years when Germany, the FRG, tried to emerge from the devastation of the war in a period marked by Chancellor Adenauer’s years in office and the Marshall Plan.
Zsuzsa Farkas: Under the spell of faces
The book Under the Spell of Faces presents the material of the Museum of Ethnography's collection from Békés County. The book was written by Tímea Bata, whose name is associated with the sciencific visual processing of other segments of the collection of images by rural photographers. In addition to the material of the book, Zsuzsa Farkas's review also describes in detail the author's work so far. The book itself is a very important step in the direction of making image-processed documents direct sources of history.
