SUMMARY– 2022/3
Szilvia Csanádi-Bognár: Between Description and Pattern - Lajos Csontó:2020 Year of the Dog
Lajos Csontó's book is a photo and text diary of open-heart surgery. But what kind of pictures are these? What texts about the border seem all too easily permeable? Whatever tool is applicable to analyse such a work/documentary. Szilvia Csanádi-Bognár's writing is both sensitive and rigorous. She points out details and the delicate tissue of texts and does not let the reader's attention wander. Because what Lajos Csontó's book is about is fundamental for all of us. Lajos Csontó does not mince words.
György Cséka: Two Serious Figures in Suits, Words and Images Inquire About Gerhes – About Gábor Gerhes’ Works - Part II
Gábor Gerhes is an inescapable figure in contemporary Hungarian photography. Last year, Mai Manó House looked back on his 25-year career in a retrospective exhibition. György Cséka reviewed and analysed Gábor Gerhes’ oeuvre at the request of our magazine. You can read the second part of this study in this issue.
Gábor Ébli: Intensive art consumption - New media works from Péter Barta’s collection
Exhibited at the Budapest Photo Festival in spring 2022, media specialist Péter Barta’s collection embraces a wide use of photography mostly as part of project-based and conceptual contemporary artworks that range from ephemeral installations (e. g. by the Little Warsaw duo) to Japanese artist Hirotoshi Iwasaki’s animation reflected in a mirror applied to the monitor.
Gábor Ébli: Mirror with scratches -Photo-based works from the K-ARTS Collection
Based in Kecskemét, the KÉSZ construction holding has been running a corporate art patronage programme for about two decades now. As a result, a sizeable collection of mainly steel sculptures but also contemporary paintings and photo-based works has been born. Budapest Photo Festival presents the company’s photo collection for the first time.
Balázs Gáspár: "They were afraid that we would destroy the Soviet social structure" - the Ukrainian Vremya photo collective
In the early 1970s, eight Kharkiv photographers began to make images that deviated from the criteria and ideological prescriptions set by the doctrine of socialist realism. Uniting their efforts in a struggle against the prevailing Soviet aesthetic, they founded the Vremya group (Vremya meaning time) and tried to look behind the ideological facade of power: they photographed people queuing for food, drunks, brawlers, prostitutes, nudes, run-down streets, crumbling neighbourhoods, deserted countryside, and showed the emptiness and hypocrisy of demonstrations on May Day and Victory Day. Despite censorship, harassment and the closure of exhibitions, they managed to create a new kind of art in secret during their fifteen years of operation.
Zsuzsa Farkas: The Promenade collection
The Promenade collection focuses on XIX century photography from the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Zsuzsa Farkas's text leads us into the motivations and activities of the collector. The reader will find fine details and histories collected from the related photo in the present article and the published works.
Zoltán Fejér: An Art deco camera
In his present article, Zoltán Fejér introduces the reader to the development works of the Bantam Special at the Kodak company. The development of a hand-held camera was not evident in the early XX century. That is why he provides a more extensive overview and writes about the product development works at Leitz company. The fight for the market between Kodak and the Leitz was an essential factor of the new and new inventions aven on the territory of product design. Art deco was trendy at this time, and not accidental that the Bantam Special, among other cameras, was called an art deco object.
József Mélyi: Himmel und Hölle - Exhibition of Luca Gőbölyös
The present is forcing artists to deal with global problems. Gőbölyös Luca's material, exhibited at the Fészek Klub, has been taking shape since 2017, initially as a reaction to the migration crisis. József Mélyi presents the exhibition.
Gábor Pfisztner: Is there anything to see here?
The Budapest Photo Festival organised an exhibition entitled Experiment at the Kiscelli Museum. The curators were curious to discover what trends and phenomena Hungarian photographers considered experimental in the second decade of the 21st century. Moreover, what are the perspectives from which photography can be regarded as experimental with its slowly dissolving boundaries? Gábor Pfisztner shares his thoughts with the reader on the exhibition.
Zsófia Somogyi: Meanwhile
In 2021, Pictorial Collective, one of the most important groups of Hungarian photographers, turned ten years old. The group celebrated its 10th anniversary with a major exhibition and book launch and gave an account of these ten years according to their own genre possibilities. And since both are attributed to curator Gabriella Csizek (the exhibition was co-curated by Katalin Kopin), the two fit together nicely, giving a complex picture of the group's work. Zsófi Somogyi's article in the book is about the works of 10 different artists.
Olivér Tóth: "In the world, everyone has his or her role" - Conversation with András D. Hajdú
András D. Hajdú is a quite exceptional figure in Hungarian reportage photography. His conversation with Olivér Tóth reveals not only his career but the way the crystallisation of his approach forming three roles: being an artist, a human being and a photojournalist. "I have a torch-bearing role as a photographer working with conviction. I'm lucky because I see on a daily basis that my work has meaning."
