{"id":4541,"date":"2015-11-15T13:11:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T13:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=4541"},"modified":"2016-12-25T15:49:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T15:49:53","slug":"1-sandor-3rd-essay-the-hungarian-paradox","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=4541","title":{"rendered":"Sa\u0301ndor Szila\u0301gyi: The Hungarian Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/?page_id=1134\">Return to Table of Content<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em><strong>S\u00e1ndor Szil\u00e1gyi, PhD,<\/strong> is a Hungarian media theorist, writer on photography, living in Budapest, Hungary. His interest range from Hungarian art photography, documentarist photography, and the theoretical questions of photography.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em>This is the third of ten essays on photography by Sa\u0301ndor Szila\u0301gyi.<br \/>\nVASA thanks the Hungarian Museum of Photography for permission to reference and link to<br \/>\nthe images in this essay.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 622px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/barany_nandor__forgastestek\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/01230006.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"612\" height=\"371\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">N\u00e1ndor B\u00e1r\u00e1ny: Bodies of Rotation, 1934. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>The Hungarian Paradox<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/146491167\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> Hungary is a small country, but a great power in terms of photographers: the names of Kert\u00e9sz, Brassa\u00ef, Moholy-Nagy, Gy\u00f6rgy Kepes, Robert Capa, Stefan Lorant, Martin Munkacsi, Lucien Herv\u00e9 and a good few other Hungarians could not be omitted from a history of photography. This is ample reason for national pride \u2013 although it would be more correct to talk about artists of <em>Hungarian origin<\/em>, as they did not produce their oeuvres in Hungary. And, to be even more precise, they were mainly Hungarian Jews who fled the country between the two World Wars not simply because of the intellectual milieu stifling their talent but also because of the specter of racial or political persecution. This does not detract from justified national pride: I mention it merely to give a fuller picture.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/00830072.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/00830072.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"286\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Yoke of six oxens 1, 1930 Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 338px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/balogh_rudolf__hatos_okorfogat_2\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/00830073.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"497\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Yoke of six oxens 2, 1930. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At the same time &#8211; and this is the Hungarian paradox &#8211; the world does not really value the photographers who worked in Hungary at that time. Rudolf Balogh, J\u00f3zsef P\u00e9csi, K\u00e1roly Escher, Olga M\u00e1t\u00e9, N\u00e1ndor B\u00e1r\u00e1ny and other prominent figures from Hungarian photography are usually passed over in histories and encyclopaedias, although many profess they are significant artists whom the world ought to take note of.<\/p>\n<p>I do not share this view and will tell you why.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Amateur late pictorialism<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/balogh_rudolf__leany_nepviseletben\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/00930067.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"238\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Girl in national dress, 1935 Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In the early, heroic age of photography everything was just fine: Hungarian photography was <em>up to date<\/em>. A couple of weeks after the report of Daguerre\u2019s invention the Hungarian public knew about it and a year later a manual in Hungarian &#8211; although published in Vienna &#8211; spread the knowledge of the invention. Shortly afterwards Daguerreotypists started working in Hungary. Later, Hungarian traveller\/explorer photographers (P\u00e1l Rosti, Bal\u00e1zs Orb\u00e1n), natural science photographers (Lor\u00e1nd E\u00f6tv\u00f6s, Jen\u0151 Gothard, Mikl\u00f3s Konkoly-Thege) and professional photographers (Gy\u00f6rgy Kl\u00f6sz, the Divalds, M\u00f3r Erd\u00e9lyi, Man\u00f3 Mai) were no worse &#8211; alas no better either &#8211; than their contemporaries likewise busying themselves in other parts of the world. The Hungarian inventors J\u00f3zsef Petzval and Ferenc Veress even pop up in the international vanguard.<\/p>\n<p>So for the first sixty years everything was just fine &#8211; only from the aspect of the theme we are concerned with, the history of photography as <em>art<\/em>, this is of no significance, as this was <em>before<\/em> photography as art existed at all.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/146489558\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> Photography as art creating lasting values was born with pictorialism precisely as a counter to the amateur dilettantism of club photography. In England the decisive step was the establishment of the Linked Ring Brotherhood in 1892, while in America in 1896 Alfred Stieglitz came to the helm of the New York Camera Club, then a couple of years later, in 1902, announced the Photo-Secession.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 328px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/balogh_rudolf__matyo_anya_ot_gyerekkel_a_halaszbastya_el__tt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/00830115.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"430\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Maty\u00f3 mother with five kids in front of the Fishermen\u2019s Bastion, 1935. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In Hungary, however, something entirely different happened. The Hungarian amateur movement began a good decade later than in other European countries. It only started to take shape in 1904, which in itself is no real problem. What is, however, is that as a result of the delay it set out in the spirit of <em>readily adopted<\/em> pictorialism! To put it the other way round, as this is really the point: Hungarian pictorialism was amateur beyond help, third rate and imitative. I think it does matter whether a Stieglitz, K\u00e4sebier or Steichen sensitised their paper by hand or dilettanti like Zolt\u00e1n Kiss, G\u00e9za Szak\u00e1l or Dr Gy\u0151z\u0151 Kem\u00e9ny did so.<\/p>\n<p>And what is even worse is that our truly talented photographers such as Istv\u00e1n Kerny, Iv\u00e1n Vydar\u00e9ny, Angelo (P\u00e1l Funk), J\u00f3zsef P\u00e9csi, and Rudolf Balogh were still working in the pictorialist spirit when the rest of the world had long ago moved on. Just look at the catalogue of the 2nd International Art Photograph Exhibition in Budapest \u2212 from 1927!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The \u201cHungarianisch\u201d style \u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s not all! In Hungary it was not just that pictorialism was intertwined with the amateur movement, and or even that it had outlived itself. In Hungary the <em>rejection of pictorialism was <\/em>likewise ambiguous, <em>dilettante<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In America at the turn of 1916-17 Paul Strand and in his wake Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams and others created the modern, <em>Straight Photography<\/em> by breaking with the pictorialist approach lock, stock and barrel. But one element &#8211; the most important one &#8211; they took with them: the requirement that a photographic work of art, a print, be a manual creation of exceptional standard.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/146489837\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> In Hungary between the wars, the representatives of the emergent <em>Hungarian style<\/em> demanding modern (or rather semi-modern) photography did exactly the opposite. Although they radically changed the printing syntax of photography, the external appearance of the print, in that the gloss print &#8211; what\u2019s more a print \u201cglazed\u201d with the aid of a heated chrome sheet &#8211; was favoured,<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref\"><sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-4541-1' id='fnref-4541-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(4541)'>1<\/a><\/sup><\/a> they retained the most important component of pictorialism\u2019s camera syntax: the cult of the <em>soft-focus lens<\/em>, emphasising the highlights in part by a supplementary softening lens, in part by shooting \u201cbacklight\u201d opposite a source of light. These are only the external signs, the signs of form, but they already betray a crude dislocation of taste, the ambiguous \u201cprogress\u201d of photography imitating painting.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/vadas_ern____libak\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/1446822698_02480128.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"290\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Geese in counter-light, 1935. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>More importantly than this, however, the Hungarian style not merely \u201cmodernised\u201d the softening aestheticism of pictorialism, but also &#8211; and clearly not divorced from this &#8211; preserved for posterity its idealizing pictures of people and nature. I know of no one who has actually noticed the curious parallel<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref\"><sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-4541-2' id='fnref-4541-2' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(4541)'>2<\/a><\/sup><\/a> that Edward S. Curtis, who started as a pictorialist, and got stuck in it, photographed the North American Indians in the same lying and idealizing manner as the photographers of the <em>Hungarian style<\/em> \u2013 Rudolf Balogh, Ern\u0151 Vadas, K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Sz\u00f6ll\u0151sy, Tibor Cs\u00f6rge\u0151 and others \u2013 did the villages around Budapest. (NB villages of the assimilated Swabian or Slavic minorities in Hungary.) Curtis made his subjects put on ceremonial dress, on top of which he even stuck \u201cIndian\u201d wigs and headdresses out of the props basket on their heads, and put copper rings in their noses and ears for the sake of an aesthetic effect. But where was all this between 1907 and 1930, when the shots were taken &#8211; and which, not surprisingly, have a nineteenth-century feel? Rudolf Balogh\u2019s romance of the plain and peasantry, the Hungarian -style\u2019s \u201cpearly bouquet\u201d of rural idylls were similarly anachronistic occurrences.<\/p>\n<p>To avoid any misunderstanding, the trouble with the Hungarian style was not its folk subject matter, but its <em>untruthfulness<\/em>.<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref\"><sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-4541-3' id='fnref-4541-3' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(4541)'>3<\/a><\/sup><\/a> Out of this arises -like the chicken and the egg of course- its false aesthetics. This is why it couldn\u2019t be Hungarian, only Hungarianisch, and by no means folk, merely folksy. This was the wrong answer to the contradictions of modernisation, and industrial and urban society.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/pusztai_csarda_\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/1446822288_02480127.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudolf Balogh: Inn in the &#8220;puszta&#8221;, 1936. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t the only wrong answer. In an aesthetic sense the reverse of the Hungarian style, the committed left-wing, politically progressive, socio-photography (Kata K\u00e1lm\u00e1n, Kata Sug\u00e1r, Judit K\u00e1r\u00e1sz, Kass\u00e1k\u2019s circle) from an aesthetic viewpoint produced similarly ambiguous, idealizing results. It seems there\u2019s no mistake about it: if we approach people with ideological presuppositions, if we only see them as representing a social category, then all we get is stereotyped answers and ideological intimations.<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref\"><sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-4541-4' id='fnref-4541-4' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(4541)'>4<\/a><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Recto and verso: it is no coincidence that later Hungarian social realism during the communist era was stitched together from elements of the Hungarian folk style and socio-photography &#8211; by often the very same semi-amateur photographers, and photographing writers and pioneers of the movement who between the wars occupied themselves in one area or the other.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Hungarian \u201corange\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Representatives of the belated, semi-amateur Hungarian pictorialism that outlived itself and of the pure-bred amateur Hungarian style that was raised to a quasi official status have no place in the universal history of photography. And socio-photography that appeared in opposition did not enrich the photographic way of seeing in any way. The world has not lost a thing by not knowing about them. That\u2019s the sad truth of the matter.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 232px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/pecsi_jozsef__sebastian_droste\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/01440109.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">J\u00f3zsef P\u00e9csi: Sebastian Droste, 1925. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There were, however, figures in Hungarian photography between the two world wars who, if not in the international vanguard, were in the second or third rank, albeit if in the applied genres of photography.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, the work of the advertising photographer (and writer on photography) J\u00f3zsef P\u00e9csi deserves mention. In these areas he was a true pioneer in many respects. His artistically motivated images, however, are almost as if Drtikol had made them &#8211; only P\u00e9csi was somehow less bold than the experimenter from Prague.<\/p>\n<p>Rudolf Balogh\u2019s Hungarian style and country propagandist idealism have already been mentioned, but his earlier \u201crealist\u201d work from the First World War is by no means without interest. It\u2019s a shame that he didn\u2019t go further in this direction. K\u00e1roly Escher was also good in an applied category: in his photoreports he applied a Moholy-Nagy-\/Rodchenko-like overhead view with a remarkable aesthetic sense (Ern\u0151 Vadas produced more modest results in the same way), although Escher, too, is only in the second rank of the Constructivist-Bauhaus style.<\/p>\n<p>I believe more attention should be given to Olga M\u00e1t\u00e9, who used the abstract, geometrical approach of Straight Photography, and did so very finely. Her career has many parallels with Margaret Bourke-White. N\u00e1ndor B\u00e1r\u00e1ny\u2019s photographic nonsenses, his grotesque and almost bizarre way of seeing were an entirely special phenomenon; the only comparison that comes to my mind is (the slightly commercial) William Mortensen.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 606px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/fotografiak\/mate_olga__csikosok_itatashoz_keszulnek\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fotomuzeum.hu\/media\/fenykep\/kicsi\/01310045.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"596\" height=\"403\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Olga M\u00e1t\u00e9: Wranglers preparing to watering, 1937. Permission: Hungarian Museum of Photography<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Of course, no harm will come of it if the wider world gets to know the life\u2019s work (or the best of it) of the above mentioned. But let\u2019s not kid ourselves: even for their sake, there\u2019s no need to rewrite the history of photography. Not one of them is of comparable stature to Sudek, Kert\u00e9sz, Cartier-Bresson or Brassa\u00ef.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/146490490\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> It would be good to finally lay the ghost of the <em>double standard<\/em> of national inferiority. We need to learn what is the lasting achievement of original talent and what is the fleeting imitation of fashion \u2013 not only in the past, but in the present, too.<\/p>\n<p>We should call a lemon a lemon, if it\u2019s small, yellow and tart, rather than lie that it\u2019s a Hungarian \u201corange\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><em>(First published in Besz\u00e9l\u0151, November 2002. Translated by Christopher Claris.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/?page_id=1134\">Return to Table of Content<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-4541'>\n<div class='footnotedivider'><\/div>\n<ol>\n<li id='fn-4541-1'> Followers of Straight Photography either used platinum-palladium from the start, that is matt photographic papers, or gelatin silver papers dried semi-matt. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-4541-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li id='fn-4541-2'> Not even K\u00e1roly Kincses, in the time writing this essay the director of Hungarian Museum of Photography, in his otherwise excellent review <em>M\u00edtosz vagy siker? A magyaros st\u00edlus <\/em>Myth or success? The Hungarian style. Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskem\u00e9t, 2001. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-4541-2'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li id='fn-4541-3'> Counter examples are B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k\u2019s music, and the folk roots of the poetry of Attila J\u00f3zsef or the sociology of Ferenc Erdei. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-4541-3'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li id='fn-4541-4'> Nowadays the basis of ideologically motivated photography is not any more social class but <em>race<\/em> and <em>gender<\/em> and its theme is not work and struggle but entertainment and sex. However, clich\u00e9s remain naturally clich\u00e9s. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-4541-4'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to Table of Content S\u00e1ndor Szil\u00e1gyi, PhD, is a Hungarian media theorist, writer on photography, living in Budapest, Hungary. His interest range from Hungarian art photography, documentarist photography, and the theoretical questions of photography. This is the third of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=4541\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88893,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4541","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2KsSU-1bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4541"}],"version-history":[{"count":75,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5241,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4541\/revisions\/5241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}