SUMMARY– 2023/2

Gábor Pfisztner: The Invisible Budapest - "Here is the city, we are its inhabitants...", Budapest 150 - in the framework of the Budapest Photo Festival
How do contemporary artists see the city of Budapest? This was the question posed at this year's major exhibition at the Budapest Photo Festival. Visitors were confronted with many conceptually and technically different answers at the show. Gábor Pfisztner, in his essay, outlines the approaches, presenting the most striking ones.

Gábor Ébli: Completely different, is that OK? - Photo-based art from the Artkartell Collection
Launched in 2012, the Artkartell program integrates diverse forms of art patronage, from studio residency to solo exhibitions in a renovated post-industrial project space. As a result of this family-owned mission, a collection of over six-hundred contemporary artworks has come about including numerous photo-based compositions.

Szilvia Csanádi-Bognár Reinterpreting what has become alien -Kerekes Emőke: My Land
Emőke Kerekes moved from Budapest to a small village in Transylvania. This is the starting point for her landscapes, which give an entirely new meaning to landscape and landscape images. Szilvia Csanádi-Bognár's writing introduces the reader to this renewed understanding and representation of landscape.

Judit Csatlós: Dorottya Vékony: The Rites of Letting Go
Judit Csatlós has written a sensitive analysis of Dorottya Vékony's exhibition in the Budapest Gallery. Dorottya Vékony explores the collective forms of coping with infertility and the potential of women's communities. In her research, she visited various support and self-organising groups, engaging with them as a stakeholder and participant. Thanks to this internal positioning, the exhibition takes a transformative approach that promotes change rather than the usual psychological or political policy.

Zsófia Somogyi: Inaccessible experiences - Katalin Vasali: There will be another one
Rita Somosi organized an exhibition of Katalin Vasali's photographs at B32 Gallery. The collection was built around a personal tragedy and its clichéd responses. The possible emotions associated with miscarriage are challenging to process, both for those who suffer it and those who stand outside it. Zsófi Somogyi's writing sensitively introduces the exhibition and situates its material within the oeuvre of Katalin Vasali.

B. Tier Noémi: Past - Present - Future
The TOBE Geléria organized an exhibition of Anna Fabricius' 12 Gestures series from Taiwan. Noémi B. Tier's interview asks questions about the circumstances of the series' creation and reveals her connections with previous works.

Anne Kotzan: Frames of Reference - Lucinda Devlin's retrospective exhibition
Lucinda Devlin's photographs are the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Photographische Sammlung der SK Stiftung in Cologne. Devlin's focus is not on the sensational or the spectacular but on the cultural history of our civilisation, reflected in interiors and natural spaces. Lucinda Devlin was one of the exponents of New Color Photography. Anne Kotzan shares her thoughts on the exhibition and Devlin's work.

Olivér Tóth: "Every picture is a secret."
Judit M. Horváth interviewed by Olivér Tóth. The conversation focuses on the artist's and her series's personal background, the life situations in which they were born, and the threads that connect the series. The conversation also reveals how Judit M. Horváth's approach has changed over the years and how the ars poetica she now claims as her own has evolved.

Leila Sajjadi: Fate reflected in images - on the photos of Babak Kazemi
vThe socio-economic developments in Iran in the last decades provide a rich material source for photographers working there. Babak Kazemi, if only because of his age, has produced work from this period in the last two decades. Leila Sajjadi's article analyses Kazemi's series' history and its social and personal aspects.

Mihály Surányi: Slaughterhouse and Supplication - Some Thoughts on Tamás Schild's series "Slaughterhouse Anzix"
It may be surprising, but slaughterhouses have a long iconographic history. The writing of Mihály Surányi unveils some of them for the reader, and he analyses Schild Tamás's photo series and his video work in this iconographic frame.

Balázs Gáspár: The visible and invisible traces of photographs - photography, ecology and capitalism
The Kunst Haus Wien organised an exhibition titled "Mining Photography. The Ecological Footprint of Image Production". The show intended to explore photography and the related industry that serves photographers as part of the global production system. Balázs Gáspár's article reflects on the issues raised by the exhibition.

Balázs Zoltán Tóth: In the end, all photography is a struggle - Notes on the work of Mihály Gera - Part 2
Mihály Gera was an essential figure in Hungarian photography in the second half of the 20th century, which is why it is important to explore his activities as accurately as possible from the point of view of photographic history. The present article is the second part of the research results of Balázs Zoltán Tóth in the archive of Mihály Gera. The first part was published in Fótóművészet 2022/4.

Renáta Liszi: Photo London
Renáta Liszi visited the Photo London fair in May as a photographer. In this article, she summarises her experiences on the spot.

Zopán Nagy: Collab
Zopán Nagy wrote a poetic summary of the exhibition organised by the ARTER Art Association and the Hungarian Electrographic Society.

Zoltán Fejér. Bowing and sighing.
An exhibition of paintings by Ergy Landau opened at the Mai Manó House. Zoltán Fejér's article details the events related to the artist that has taken place in Hungary in the past decades. Finally, it analyses the exhibition itself—all this, of course, with his usual thoroughness.