Hungarian photography from the beginnings to World War II by Károly Kincses
(trans.: Vera Bakonyi-Tánczos)
What Is a Photo Worth If It Is Hungarian?
Introduction to the History of Hungarian Photography, from the Beginnings to the End of World War II
If one set themselves the otherwise impossible goal of getting to know a country inside and out, together with its landscape, settlements, people, the events that have happened to them, and so much more, they can be assured not to achieve the desired result, even if they gave their entire life to it. Because the more one sees and the more one knows, the more it becomes evident how much still remains hidden. It, therefore, makes sense to reduce our desires, and take only a small slice instead of the multitude that lays before us, hoping that the entire ocean is there in every single drop of water. The Hungarian House of Photography is trying to help the visitors of the gallery and the readers of this catalog in this hopeless venture. We have set out from two presumptions: one is that Hungary is a rather interesting place, not much favored by the history of past centuries; the other is that Hungary is the birthplace of many talented photographers. From here, we have come to the conclusion that if the country is interesting in itself, plus many good photographers took pictures there, one can assume that a top selection of their work would not be unworthy of our attention.
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The history of Hungarian photography is like that of other similar countries. Generally important, sometimes even overrated, regarding local values, but in the international scene, only a few of its elements are interesting. Almost every nation has a few golden ages when the scattered field lines suddenly start to converge, and the profession together with the audience takes notice. Hungarian photography also had at least two illustrious periods, which took place approximately in the first few decades of the 20th century. André Kertész, Brassaï, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Capa and his brother Cornell, Martin Munkácsi, Éva Besnyő, Ata Kandó, Paul Almásy, György Kepes, Ergy Landau, Stefan Lóránt, and about a dozen more – we praise all these well-known photographers as our own. They were all born and raised in this period. This is one of the many reasons why the history of Hungarian photography is fascinating. Our nation, just like most, produces its national idols, tropes, people who, in their fields of expertise, have created something important, valuable, something beyond their own era. Of course, I only mean photography here. After they die, these people become their own memorials, and we quickly forget that they used to be flesh-and-bone humans. We drag them out when we want to flaunt or brag, and then we put them back in their dusty folders.
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1839 marks an important year in the history of photography: discoveries, inventions, technical innovations converged at this point, and this is where the explorers from all the different avenues met, in order to make one whole out of the parts they knew. The principle of the camera obscura, known since ancient times, the 18th-century knowledge regarding the photosensitivity of metallic salts, and the developments in the field of optics together resulted in the birth of photography, that is, writing with light. A product of physical, chemical and optical results, photography provided the world with a new way of thinking, a new approach, the equal handling of what happened in the past and what is just happening in the present. This was not only the birth of a new medium; it also resulted in the fundamental reorganization of the entire cultural, social and informational system of humanity as it had been known.
Since 1839, almost everything what is, what was, and sometimes even what never ever existed has been captured. People began to have images of themselves, their childhood, their grandfathers, and the events of their past. The immense expectations of society towards photography are quite evident from its fast proliferation: starting from January 1839, when the invention was announced by Arago at the French Academy of Sciences, it took less than one and a half years for it to spread and be used all over the world, which was quite an achievement considering the contemporary level of communication transmission, and resulted in an unbelievable communications boom, which slowly but surely marginalized the thousands of years of written culture in favor of visuality.
As everywhere else in the world, photography was invented in 1839 in Hungary as well. Yet – and as Hungarians we are prone to think this of ourselves – we forewent the world even in this respect. There is, in fact, a letter dated February 21, 1839, and written by Farkas Bolyai, a genius of a mathematician, who studied in Göttingen and lived in Transylvania, which says the following: “The fixation of the image of the camera obscura is a beautiful invention: as soon as they [hath] said it, first I [hath] said that it was[t] impossible with the colors there are [art], but I promise[th] that if[‘t be true] I fixate a negative in black, then, as they [hath] said it, the image remains even if[‘t be true] in dark. It is a quite beautiful concept, and its perfecting and consequences should[st] be[est] expected.” As at this time, the invention was only yet announced in Paris, and its detailed description only followed in August, it can be assumed that Bolyai himself was experimenting with photography upon the news of the invention. But because our only source is the above letter, all this is of course just an interesting nuance.
From this on, everything went on like in any other part of the world: more and more daguerreotypists and calotypists started working in Hungary, which at that time was part of the Habsburg Empire. One of them, Joseph Petzval is especially worthy of mention: the scholar-teacher made scientific calculations and created the first fast photographic lens in 1840, making it possible to shorten the exposure time from minutes to seconds. He also made amateur daguerreotypes, and some of his other activities earned him a special memorial in Vienna, a bust in the pantheon of the university, as well as the honor of having a street and a Moon crater named after him. He was born in Szepesbéla (Spišská Belá), Romania, studied at the university in Pest, Hungary, and became an instructor at the University of Vienna, Austria. Thus, three countries share his person and achievements; however, Petzval does not belong to any of them – he is part of the universal history of photography. His lens crossed the Channel, so British photographers could start looking at the world through these types of objectives as well. The reason for mentioning this is nothing less than the fact that an unbelievably talented member of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1856 was called Iván Szabó. Of course, he was a Hungarian immigrant, who, fearing retaliation, left Hungary after the war of independence in 1848–49 was put down, and opened a calotype studio under 4 Salisbury Place. He photographed Fox Talbot and his family, and had an exhibition with the greatest artists of his time, David Octavius Hill, and Robert Adamson. Who knows what he could have become, had he not died so young. But these are just episodes, shining stars against the otherwise dull, gray sky.
At this time the Monarchy was a significant part of Europe, and, with symbolic inner borders, it was open to citizens of all ethnicities and titles. (Except for those, of course, who were forced to stay put for a longer period by the Austrian authorities due to their rebellious behavior.) Thanks to this relative openness, it was possible for a photographer’s apprentice in Pest (now Hungary) to be liberated in Vienna (now Austria), to work in Bratislava (now Slovakia) and Prague (now the Czech Republic), then, after passing through Zagreb (now Croatia) and Cluj-Napoca (now Romania), to settle for example in Presov (now Romania), while keeping up a studio in Debrecen (now Hungary) as well. Let me mention some of the professional and amateur daguerreotypists who operated for shorter or longer periods of time in Pest-Buda in the one and a half decades following 1840. We can see the multitude of cultures these half-artists, half-artisans belong to, and how the history of photography in Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Zagreb, and Krakow show so many similarities and complementary elements of continuity.
The first photographer with a studio in Pest was called Jakab Marastoni; he arrived from Venice, but he worked in Cluj-Napoca and Bratislava as well. Later on, he gave up his daguerreotype studio to establish the First Hungarian Academy of Painting. The building is still erect, and some of his daguerreotypes have been preserved by the Hungarian National Museum. The Piarist monk-teacher, Jakab Zimmerman is known for the first Hungarian translation of a book on making daguerreotypes. He was educating the noble youth from 1840 in the Theresianum in Vienna, where he read Daguerre’s book in German. He translated it and had it published in Vienna in 1840, under the title Daguerre képei elkészítése módjának leírása [The Description of Daugerre’s Method of Creating Images]. Thus, already in the year following the invention, everyone could read the description of photography in Hungarian, could see the tools, could try the recipes and instructions for use. He was then appointed the extraordinary professor of aesthetics and linguistics at the university of Pest. Our daguerreotypist Khogler probably arrived from the direction of Austria, opening his studio in 1843, only to move on to other countries of the Empire, where there happened to be a substantial demand for his photographic art. Stuhr arrived straight from Berlin and worked in the Tigris [Tiger] Inn in Pest. We have some written documents of how the about two and a half dozen daguerreotypists not only directed the lenses of their cameras to people who were well-known or who sank into oblivion by today, but they also photographed the city. However, unfortunately, there are only a few such images remaining today, let’s say, maximum three. Ádám Gola, who was an artificial flower artisan and a daguerreotypist operating in Buda, created a series on silver plates, which depicted the inner yard of sculptor István Ferenczy’s studio in Buda. He recorded the draft sculptures and the plaster casts, all of which the artist himself smashed after the photos had been taken in 1846, so most artworks of the once famed sculptor of Pest are only known from these polished silver plates. Lajos Beniczky painter and photographer was taking photographs in Vienna around 1845, then came to Pest, and left for New York in the 1870s. The Angerer brothers were born in Malacka, Slovakia, as children of Hungarian parents, but they became known and acknowledged as imperial and royal photographers in Vienna and Pest. And I could go on. My point is that everyone’s national history is interwoven with foreign threads here in Central Europe, and the parts only gain meaning looking at the whole.
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The first prominent figures of Hungarian photography were mostly trained chemists and pharmacists because they needed to be familiar with chemistry, or they were aurificēs, goldsmiths because they already had much experience in polishing silver plates. Otherwise, they tended to be portrait and miniature painters of the Biedermeier style, because making pictures was their cup of tea, and they hoped for a better living from the newly invented light-writing. Starting from 1860, for two-three decades the traditional studio portrait photography was hallmarked by names like that of Miklós Barabás, József Borsos, Ferenc Veress, Károly Koller, Lipót Strelisky, Ödön Uher, and Manó Mai. Out of them, Ferenc Veress has a particular importance. He was born in Cluj-Napoca and originally studied to be an aurifex-engraver, opening one of the first portrait studios of Transylvania in 1853. Besides creating the portraits of local aristocrats and famous people, he became one of the first and rather talented city and landscape photographers as well: he photographed all of the Transylvanian castles, landscapes, cities of historical importance, which had been known only from engravings until then, or not even from those. One of his numerous initiatives was starting the first regular Hungarian professional photography magazine, Fényképészeti Lapok (Photographic Papers) in 1882, and running it for six years. He experimented with photo porcelain and one of the first color photography techniques, producing heliochromes. He was the first to give a lecture on photography as part of a university course. He was a universal talent, and his career could be used for presenting almost all areas of early Hungarian photography.
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There is also a more exotic part to Hungarian photography: the photographs created by the early travelers, globetrotters, hunters, and explorers. One of the most important photographers is Károly Szathmári Pap, born in Cluj-Napoca and serving six Romanian voivodes and kings, whose pictures of the Crimean War of 1854–1856 belong to the category of universal value: war campaign photos that can be mentioned on the same page with those of Roger Fenton. Szathmári managed to get himself accepted by both of the opposing parties, the Russian and the Turkish armies as well, appearing in both camps with his dark chamber and laboratory installed on a closed horse-drawn carriage. Before each shot he had to wet a collodion glass plate negative, put it in his big three-leg wooden machine still dripping, do the exposure, and then develop the image right away. Thus, we cannot talk about masterfully captured moments; still, all the tension and the enormity of the war are there, concentrated in his pictures. Several of his decorative albums created for the rulers of the era have been destroyed or lost, so his pictures are quite valued and highly-priced items on the fine art market. Similarly, the less than fifty photos of the young captain, Baron Pál Rosti, who fled to escape retaliation after the war of independence, depicting the 1856–1857 Cuba, Venezuela, and Mexico are very special and of high value. Some of the albumin images copied from large format waxed-paper negatives are outstanding compared to the photos of the age both in terms of their subject-matter, and also from the aspect of workmanship. Without the urban images, landscapes, and castle photographs of György Klösz, Mór Erdélyi, Károly Divald and Antal Weinwurm, our knowledge of Hungary and its capital, as they used to be, would be incomplete. These masters also had to face the limited possibilities of reproduction in photography; it is no accident that each of them made attempts in the field of photomechanical multiplication processes, with relative success. One of them worked in the field of photolithography, the other with the heliochromic process, or heliotypes (Albertypes), while Weinwurm in zincography, so that soon after the printable, multipliable photograph would emerge, taking over the wooden and steel engravings, and lithographs, prepared on the basis of the original photograph until then.
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Later on, these outstanding masters, who took the lion’s share in the development and propagation of photography, were gradually replaced by decent tradesmen in the field of photography, many of them real masters of their trade. Images, visitation cards and cabinet portraits showing a ghostly resemblance to each other were created by the hundred thousand, not much different from the other millions taken in New Zealand, Portugal, or Boston in sunlit studios around this time. They ordered their backdrops from the same places, used the same settings, the same even, scattered lighting set-up with the help of curtains and deflectors, and they had their subjects sit and stand in the same postures. Subsequently, the creator of the photograph did not have to be skilled in everything, because the glass plates were not sensitized, and the photo papers were not albumenized in the laboratories next to the studios. The photographer’s profession had become a trade, first on a manufacturing level, then with an accelerating industrialization, making it increasingly hopeless to win the by then almost three decades long struggle of having photography accepted as an art form. But then there appeared a few masters, for whom the repetition of established templates was not enough; they reduced the number of accessories and old-fashioned furniture in their studios to the minimum for their better works, and changed the lighting, the setup. They started taking different, more modern portraits. Aladár Székely was one of the most famous of this group, creating iconic pictures at the beginning of the 20th century of one of the most significant poets of the age, Endre Ady, and of other individuals determining the artistic life of the era. At the same time, a whole generation grew up, who did much for the coming of age of Hungarian photography. Besides Székely, there was, for example, József Pécsi, Olga Máté, Count Mihály Esterházy, Géza Szakál, József Schermann, Angelo Pál Funk, and Iván Vydareny, as well as the members of the photo clubs and amateur associations primarily operated by scientists and aristocrats. The latter – via their activities – all formulated a reaction to the view represented by the contemporary opinion shaping agents in fine arts, who belittled and wanted to exclude photography from the arts. At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, there were two opposing processes in Hungarian photography as well. The official studio photography was deteriorating, while the yet insignificant amateur photography started to strengthen. This is when artistic photography as known today started to emerge, and pictorial photography was born. From the turn of the century until the 1920s the so-called painting style was the officially accepted school. This process resulted in that by the middle of the 1920s modern Hungarian photography started to emerge, with its own language, and various styles. Almost everything that could eventually lead to the appearance of an independent photography, which was definitively separated from fine arts, originates in this period.
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The style above divided those dealing with photography for good, and has divided them ever since. Some claimed it was beyond all praise, as with the help of the technical means of photography, the creator obtained maximum freedom to formulate his or her images. Artisan processes were developed. From rubber prints through pigment, carbon, or brome oil prints and screening, several other processes served the artistic self-expression of those wanting to break with the perfectly sharp and accurate photography depicting reality ‘only’. On the other hand, the objectors wanted to call the process and those committed to it to account for not using the peculiar, distinctive language of photography, for giving in to the effects and mannerisms offered by graphics and painting genres. Everybody expressed and has been expressing their own opinions about this, and both sides possess some truth. Yet, all through the timeline of artistic photography, sometimes stronger and sometimes pushed into the background, the endeavor has been present. Referred to as by many names – such as Photo-Secession, soft focus photography, pictorialism, permanent (noble) processes, etc., – it has gained a raison d’ętre, and have become an inexpugable part of the history of the genre. Following the scattered preludes, some outstanding artists, and the events and persons considered significant only locally, the first really important period of Hungarian photography was the few years after the turn of the century. Then our photographers working in the pictorialist style appeared in exhibitions together with the best of the world: Alvin Langdon Coburn, Puyo, Demachy, and Hugo Erfurth. Their images contributed to that photography, which was until then used mostly just for documentation and presentation, could become a form of art. Such were the masters of the generation which in turn made Hungarian photography known all over the world.
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One should look for the roots of modernism in photography at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, as this is when photography finally found its real style, tools, and media. The obsolete pictorial style was surpassed, and photography-like photos gained ground once again. Through images that were sharply accentuating the light-shadow effect, emphasizing the structural surface and substance of materials, choosing new points of view, and applying a new spirit of objectivity, photography learned to speak in its own language, not in ways of expression inherited from different branches of fine arts. This period was hallmarked by the Bauhaus, the new objectivity, Photorealism, and the most brilliant artists of the era are still a strong influence on the best artists. Some Hungarian photographers and some artists approaching photography from a different angle had a major role in shaping and helping the acceptance of the photographic language: for example, artists László Moholy-Nagy, Brassaï, György Kepes, or photographers like André Kertész, Márton Munkácsi, or Robert Capa.
There is no person in the world with some connection to photography who would not know Kertész’s Melancholic Tulip or The Falling Soldier by Capa, or the pieces of Brassaï’s Paris by Night. These photographers all emigrated – together with several hundreds of other photographers – from the Hungary of that era, primarily for political reasons, or because they sensed the danger of impending fascism. Their importance and influence are indisputable: in his memoir, Richard Avedon names Munkácsi as his master, while Cartier-Bresson, too, took a fancy to photography after seeing the Munkácsi photo Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika. Similar to many outstanding photographers, journalists, musicians, artists, scientists and prominent representatives of other trades, Munkácsi left for Berlin where he became the chief photojournalist of Ullstein’s publishing house in 1928. Hundreds of his pictures were published in the best illustrated paper of the time, the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, as well as in the Die Dame, the Uhu, and the Die Woche. He created brilliant photo reports on the first round-the-world flight of the Zeppelin airship, or Kemal Pasha, and took remarkable nudes of Leni Riefenstahl. In 1934, he left Germany, where fascism was taking over, for the United States; here he was contracted right away by Harper’s Bazaar, the paper of the Hearst Corporation. He established a school with his eventful, lively, open space fashion photographs. He lived in New York as one of the best-paid photojournalists in the world. Hundreds of stories were and have been told about him; his work is almost overshadowed by all the actual and made-up tales related to him.
I shall arbitrarily highlight a few more, world-renowned Hungarian emigrant photographers from the endless line, whose life stories well reflect the fate of the typical Central European artist. Miklós Müller got an eventful life with a little more limited fame: he passed away as Nicolas Muller, a well-known photographer of Spain. He was born in Orosháza, Hungary, and he received his first camera from his uncle at the age of 13, for his Bar Mitzvah. After the Piarist Secondary School in Budapest, he studied law at the University of Szeged, and shared a rented apartment with the famous poet Miklós Radnóti for a while. He earned his doctorate degree in 1936. He took sharp social documentary photographs with a strong sense of social criticism while working as a clerk in his father’s law office. In January 1937, he became a member of the Modern Magyar Fényképezők Csoportja (Group of Modern Hungarian Photographers). In 1938, in parallel with Hitler’s takeover of Austria, he set off for the world. He knew that a Jewish boy with leftist sentiments would not be much appreciated over here. He was wandering in Europe with a small chest, a suitcase, and his camera for ten years. In Paris, he was helped by Lucien Hervé, Brassaï, and Robert Capa, and finally, he found his second home, Spain.
Many recognize the pictures of André de Dienes, but are ignorant of the fact that the photographer and one of the fiancés of Marilyn Monroe was born in Turia, Transylvania (today a part of Romania). He set out for the world following the suicide of his mother at the age of 15, and visited several European countries mostly on foot. He purchased his first camera in Tunisia, and lived in Paris for five years from 1933. He became a fashion photographer in the capital of fashion, and he left for the United States in 1938. His pictures were published in Vogue. He photographed the Hopi, the Navajo and the Apache Indians. For a fashion photographer, he created a powerful series about Harlem street life. In 1944, he moved to Hollywood. He took nudes and fashion photographs in nature and not in a studio environment. He photographed the stars of the greatest Hollywood studios in the 1940s and 1950s, including Ingrid Bergmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Ronald Reagan, Anita Ekberg, and first and foremost, Marilyn Monroe.
I have avoided discussing the works of the well-known André Kertész, Brassaï, Robert Capa and László Moholy-Nagy on purpose. They are all the same from one aspect: they all left Hungary fearing for their lives and livelihood, making a career in Germany, France, England, or the United States of America. Their photographs and works may be encountered anywhere: at several exhibitions and in hundreds of books, albums and journals the deal with their oeuvre. Their influence is remarkably considerable. Their photographs, although taken in the fragment of a moment, take us over to eternity.
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Many talented and noteworthy photographers remained in Hungary as well. We consider Rudolf Balogh to be the father of Hungarian photojournalists, while Károly Escher to be an apprentice surpassing his master in many aspects. Their name hallmarks an important era of Hungarian photojournalism; moreover, Balogh is also a crucial figure in the so-called Hungarian style, alongside Kálmán Szöllősy, Ernő Vadas, Tibor Csörgeő, Jenő Dulovits, and others. We should also note the names of female photographers with a high level of social sensitivity: Kata Kálmán, Klára Langer, Kata Sugár, and Marian Reismann. Lajos Kassák, the avant-garde poet and artist, published a journal titled Munka (Work), around which the leftist group of photographers, the Munka-circle was organized. Its members created committed photos with the intention of improving social problems, but with not much success. It is almost certain that, had he not fallen victim to the Holocaust, Imre Kinszki would have become world-renowned. Ernő Vadas is one of the greatest Hungarian photographers, whose artistic photographs were exhibited in around fifty countries before the war. It is, in fact, interesting to look at the number of Vadas images published in the journal Új Idők [New Times] under Károly Lyka as the editor. From 1930, his pictures appeared in the journal in an increasing numbers year by year. Then comes a sudden caesura, 1944, which results in there being only one photo by him in the January issue, and then nothing. Nothing in 1945, and then, starting from 1946, as if nothing had happened, the journal is once again filled with Vadas pictures. He spent the time of the silence in labor service, and then in the lagers of Mauthausen and Gunskirchen; he made it home to Hungary in the middle of 1945. His colleague and friend, the non-Jewish Dr. Tibor Csörgeő wrote about him: “The waves of the horrific times of 1944 reached him as well, and all cautions, . . . telling him to try and utilize the help of his friends, just like others do, were in vain. He stated that there is ‘no legal basis’ of the danger threatening him, that ‘the process was immoral,’ and that if he wanted to get off the hook of the consequences, it would mean giving in to the fascist and Arrow-Cross law-benders.” He rather chose the common fate of hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen. This naivety, this way of thinking permeated the best photos of his oeuvre. He tried to find the beauty in all things he depicted, let it be a factory, a mine, a smelter, or the portrait of a child, an adult, or an old person.
Kata Kálmán, one of his contemporaries, she studied at the dance and movement arts studio of Alice Jászi (Mrs. Madzsar) from 1927. Here she got to know Kata Sugár, who became another outstanding artist of the Hungarian social documentary photography, as well as her husband-to-be, Iván Hevesy, aesthete, art historian, one of the most significant writers on Hungarian photo-history, who himself took photographs under the aegis of the new art form. Kálmán started to take photographs under Hevesy’s influence in 1931. Not even her first pictures were about finding a path: she created portraits like the Child Eating Bread, which is one of her best known images ever since. In 1935, four years after starting her career, she earned a gold medal at the Milan Triennial. (It was actually a good year for Hungarian photography as József Pécsi and Károly Escher also received a gold medal at this event.) Her main work, the photo album titled Tiborc was published in 1937 and made her well-known instantly. “Battered and beautiful faces, men and women, children too, younger and older; all of them are charming with the artistic perfection of the picture, and poignant with the expressive force of the faces. Kata Kálmán’s pictures are a statement of the not dispossessable dignity of human existence in spite of the evident poverty.” – wrote Iván Boldizsár about the images of the Tiborc album. And, indeed.
Thus, I believe I have fulfilled the promise I made in the title, and provided you with a taste of the first one hundred years of Hungarian photography. Writing less than this is not possible, and not worth it, and writing more was not allowed at this time. To be continued.