Hungarian photography from the regime change to the present by Gábor Pfisztner
(trans. Vera Bakonyi-Tánczos)
Exercises With Photographs
It is hard to talk about photography in general due to its diverse nature as well as its complex role and impacts. This assertion remains true even if we use a very narrow definition of photography within the framework of art institutions. Thus, if we want to talk about Hungarian photography in the period after the regime change in 1989, first we must clarify what we mean by photography. This is a seemingly unnecessary proposal, as one can rightfully think that such a selection ab ovo predetermines the area in which universally accepted concepts can be used to capture and describe our subject-matter. It is not a general discussion about photography, the traditions and trends in photography, or the institutional system of Hungarian photography; that is, the topic is not what we would call ‒ by Pierre Bourdieu’s term ‒ the photographic field.[1] The below notions are rather focused on the narrow area that includes what we traditionally call photography, photo/art,[2] or in its broadest sense, the use of photography.[3] However, the situation is definitely complicated by the fact that if we leave behind the conceptual framework offered by Clement Greenberg in his lecture Modernist Painting,[4] ‒ that is, capturing and describing what we can call photography from the point of view of the possibilities and limitations that constitute the medium, ‒ then photography as an art form becomes a hardly or not at all definable category. However: bearing in mind the changes that occurred in photographic processes as well as in social practices related to photography over the past 40 years and beyond, which changes obviously had a major impact on the ways photography and photographs have been used in contemporary art and its frontiers, it also becomes absolutely certain that even the conceptual system derived from Greenberg’s definition is not applicable anymore. For similar reasons, Peter Osborne suggests that we should not discuss fine art photography (or photographs as fine art, or other variations), but in its most general sense, photography in art.[5] This is also necessary because there is no unified set of concepts that would be suitable for the unified discussion of all possible forms of photography in the art of the past two and a half decades.
When looking at such a long period, we cannot avoid having to mention some things in a historical perspective, or refer to them as a certain category which is connected to a clearly definable era and historical situation. From this aspect, the history of Hungarian photography following the change of regime in 1989 is also about how the technical foundations of a technical instrument, or a medium (based on McLuhan’s or Flusser’s definition)[6], expand, change and go through fundamental transformations. At the same time, this story is also about how the traditionally perceived limits between the areas and genres liquefy, mold, or entirely disappear, and how finding the way to talk universally about photography as understood in this very context becomes less and less obvious.[7] These processes are well detectable on the international scene as well, but what still gives them a peculiar East-Central European hue is the historical situation, which is called the change of regime. This change suddenly and almost seamlessly gave way to techniques which had not or hardly been available before (for example, Cibachrome enlargement), resulting in that the traditional black and white (B&W) analog technique was overshadowed surprisingly fast, although not absolutely without a period of transition. Thus, B&W has become just one of the many options, but with an increasing importance in return, making it possible to extend the interpretative horizons of the artworks in a significant way. There is yet another peculiar consequence of the regime change: that is, the intentions and experiments aiming at processing the past – the political turn and the resulting social and political changes – within the context of art, which is a palpable tendency in the contemporary art of other East-Central European countries as well.
The effects of the technological changes taking wing in the past nearly two decades could be realized in an already open economy and society, which was definitely evident also in the ways photos were used. Several new aspects could arise, including how photography could be utilized beyond its everyday use, for expressing thoughts and positions. As a result, the question of what the resulting image is, emerged. Is photography just another way of creating images where the ‘image’ itself has several distinctive characteristics (which are not unproblematic in theoretical terms)? Or, rather, is it a message or a statement formulated through the image, originating in the world, reflecting on it, using it as a pretense? Or, should photography be used for discussing photography, pointing out the peculiarities characterizing its role in the communication process, together with the effects it has on us in so many ways, or those we create as users, image-creators, during the usage, the process of the ’mediation,’ in art, in our personal space? Or, should we just look at it as an asset which helps us visualize the thought, or the concept, in a newly coded form, which otherwise would remain hidden, or with a different meaning, because it would find its way to the observer in a different course? These suggestions clearly show that there is no way of talking about all this in general; only about phenomena, schools, or ways of usage, and approaches.
It is also difficult to discuss Hungarian photography after the change of regime because the phenomena and processes should be examined both in a synchronic and a diachronic way at the same time, so that the parallel differences are well discernible while gaining meaning in the process of change.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the B&W analog technique was definitely dominant. It also came with a photojournalistic attitude, which was observing the changes critically, but keeping a distance, and tried to express disagreements only by visually formulating and emphasizing the grotesque, the surreal. András Bánkuti, for example, arrived from this photojournalist area, while Miklós Gulyás and András Bozsó came from a much more autonomic position, with Bozsó caricaturing exactly this well-known photojournalist approach and turning it upside down. In this period, as opposed to her earlier visual world, which was based on the raw and categorical denial of all photographic image creation rules, Lenke Szilágyi represented a much more relaxed, low-key tendency in her extensive series, which seemed to be mostly stories told in images with the density of ballads.
In the 1990s, Gábor Kerekes – who worked mostly with self-made materials and a self-built camera at the time – was close to the visual and conceptual world of modernism in photography, but the same could be said about Zsolt Péter Barta and András Balla as well.
In parallel, there was a strong presence of the experimental school, which questioned the essence of the traditional photographic procedures and the peculiarities of the photograph at this time, like Péter Bányai and Imre Drégely. In the past decade, Drégely examined the relationship between the digital and the analog media, as well as the defining role of the granules, or pixel, as the image creating quantum. In these years, Balázs Telek worked intensely with questions and concepts from art history and the history of photography, while continually trying to figure out the relationship between the opportunities offered by the camera as an imaging optical tool and the art historical tradition.
In some cases, the medium-centered approaches materialized in the form of long-term projects. One such example is Ágnes Eperjesi’s work (her B&W, then colored photograms); with her, however, the means was heavily mixed with topics new to Hungary at this time, like the gender issue. She was occupied with the place and role of women in society, as well as taking the female-theme out from the traditional framework – for which the processes offered by the photogram technique provided her with an exceptionally great opportunity. Later of course questions of art theory were conceptualized as well beyond this, for which she tried to provide an answer (e.g.: the debate between Goethe and Newton regarding the physics of colors). Diversely, Judit Katalin Elek and Lilla Szász reacted to the gender issue with the tools of personal photographs.
In parallel with this, we can observe how photography as a technique gained an increasingly significant role in contemporary art in general, where they did not focus on the means as the material to provide the form, but as a communications tool. It came to be regarded as a medium, which – by its indexing nature – has a seemingly obvious relationship with reality, but the ’image of reality’ it transfers is more than problematic. Dezső Szabó, for example, reflected on the visual imagery of the mass media (primarily television), while he used it for discussing the image as one of the most important media of art. In the same period, Gábor Gerhes applied the means of humor and used the possibilities offered by irony for similarly discussing issues of art theory (among other things).
Following the millennium, new solutions and new strategies appeared while new topics gained importance. Staging, which was already present in the works of Gerhes, received an important role from another aspect too. The traditional role of photography as an objective (or sometimes subjective) medium of documentation, possessing its own visual aesthetics, was first questioned, then marginalized. The special issue of Ex Symposion published in 2000 and titled Dokumentum [Document],[8] as well as the roundtable conversation held in Veszprém, Hungary, in 2004, during which the topics of the document and the photo were explored, are rather symptomatic than directive, but they definitely show signs of a paradigm shift regarding the role and possibilities of photography. The same change is pointed out by the Dunaújvárosi Fotóbiennálé (Photo Biennial Dunaújváros) organized in the second part of the decade, where the works of the exhibitors –Sári Ember, Péter Puklus, Lilla Szász, just to name a few – clearly fit into this process. These artists, together with Gergely Szatmári or later with Gábor Kasza, did not use the camera and the photographically captured image as a piece of evidence, but only as an opportunity for visually depicting certain relationships.
In this same period, Tibor Gyenis, mostly relying on the heritage created by members of the Pécsi Műhely in the 1970s.[9] represented a rather conceptual trend with sharp Dadaist gestures. He utilized the possibilities of the grotesque and humor, as well as reflected on the historical determination of conceptual art, while also exhibiting – through irony – the opportunities of the artist and art itself in the Hungary of the era.
In the first decade of the new millennium, there appeared new strategies, which presented how it was possible to authentically discuss society and its problems while distancing themselves from those traditional approaches which had determined the genre of the social photography since the 1930s. Péter Pettendi Szabó’s series titled Háttér / Background, using both photographs and videos, exhibited a possible approach. In recent years, Viola Fátyol has worked with social issues from a different angle as well: she has placed the personal story into a wider social context, while still focusing more prominently on the latter. At the same time, she substituted, or contrasted, the so-called authenticity of the examination with her own personal involvement and presence. Another, explicitly radical approach comes from Gabriella Csoszó, who sets out from the artistic possibilities of participation,[10] so that she can provide an opportunity for members of marginalized social groups – within and beyond art – for self-expression, the retaking of their own image, and, in turn, the creation of a new kind of (self-)representation.
At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, and in the following years, several new approaches appeared, all of which were clearly discernible from everything before them. One of them definitely points out the technological developments, the changing possibilities regarding taking and distributing photographs, as well as the proliferation and opportunities of digital techniques, in the interpretation of the youngest generation: Dániel Cseh and Tamás Páll. Another such significant approach owes its existence to that the artbook, which was made known by Edward Ruscha in the 1960s, took over the traditional photo album, gained a new significance, and turned into a new school of contemporary art in the form of the photobook.[11] The Studio of Young Photographers has organized several thematic exhibitions on such photobooks. The third new approach consists of the use of archives, which is also a recent phenomenon of the past few years in the scene of contemporary Hungarian photography. One of the early elaborations on the question is the lenticular series of Luca Gőbölyös, which deals with the issue of remembrance. Technical images fundamentally influence the way we shape our memory and store our engrams. Family photographs are mixed with other images, photos from magazines, and together they shape what we call memory. In later works, the usage of the archive actually means that the creators – for example, Eszter Bíró or Judit Flóra Schuller, as well as Gábor Arion Kudász for one complex work – made an archive themselves in order to utilize the images and objects thus organized. These artworks, in varying ways and forms, are rather taking on the form of an installation, which is location-specific and is continually changing in all cases.
Another example of installation art and mixed media use is the project of two young photographers, which was started at around the end of the 2000s and was presented in an ever renewing form over the years. Andrea Gáldi Vinkó and Éva Szombat started a photoblog, which was in principle a humorous version of the online diary with images, to be complemented by installation situations later on. Nevertheless, Éva Szombat is enthusiastic about using the possibilities provided by the visual kitsch dominating certain segments of mass culture, in order to put into quotation marks the scattered manna of the religion of happiness proliferating all over the place. Photography has taken on a unique, hybrid form, not only as a result of the digital technologies, but also in the sense that it is rather an asset and a part, and not the exclusive purpose of the creative intent. Per se, its aesthetic appearance is affected, never, however, pointing back at itself but always recalling and evoking something beyond it.
It is becoming ever more challenging to talk about photography as photography in a situation when media are mixed, when the differences between them are vanishing, and when the image can take up so many forms, even shapes, that keep changing continuously. In a situation, when the sight of the image cannot be interpreted in itself anymore, and its meaning is always dependent on the context; in a situation, when due to the technological hybridization it is almost impossible to define what still qualifies as photography; and in a situation, where the activities preliminary to creating the actual photograph may have a greater significance than the taking of the photograph itself, thus subordinating the visual representation to the subject to be presented. We are clearly in the middle of a process, which did not essentially start in the 1990s, but this point in time in this region undeniably means a sharp caesura, and not only from a social-historical aspect. Hubertus von Amelunxen wrote in 1995, based on the experiences related to the by then obvious changes, that the main character of the photography after photography is precisely this ‘after,’ and he himself did not venture into providing a more accurate definition than that. Looking back at the photography following the regime change in 1989, this ‘afterness’ is even more evident, just as the fact that it is increasingly difficult to talk about photography; rather, there are strategies which use the possibilities provided by the various forms and techniques of photography in one way or another.
[1] See, for example Bourdieu, Pierre. Photography, a Middle-Brow Art. Translated by Shaun Whiteside, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 1990. p. 218.
[2] The author uses the term photography as, for example, Sándor Szilágyi tries to define it in many of his writings, and as William Crawford discusses it in his book The Keepers of Light, a History & Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes (New York: Morgan & Morgan, 1979). The expression photo/art was used by László Beke in his 1976 article, primarily regarding the conceptual and experimental use of photography. Cf.: Beke, László. “Fotó/művészet” [Photo/Art]. Médium/Elmélet [Media/Theory]. Budapest: Balassi Kiadó – BAE Tartóshullám – Intermédia, 1997, pp. 50-58.
[3] See the author’s piece in Fotóművészet [Photograhic Art]. 2011/4.
[4] Greenberg, Clement. “Modernist Painting”. The Collected Essays and Criticism IV. Modernism with a Vengeance 1957–1969, edited by John O’ Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 85.
[5] Osborne, Peter. Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art. London, New York: Verso, 2013.
[6] To McLuhan see Mcluhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge-Paul, 1968. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man.Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Media Research: Technology, Art, Communication. Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997. To Vilém Flusser see Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Translatey by Anthony Mathews, London: Reaction Books, 2000. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Translated by Nancy Ann Roth, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. or Does Writing Have a Future? Translated by Nancy Ann Roth, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011., and on his media theory Meulen, Sjoukje van der. “Between Benjamin and Mcluhan: Vilém Flusser’s Media Theory.” New German Critique, 37/No. 2 Summer (2010), pp. 181-207.
[7] In the mid-1990s Hubertus von Amelunxen believed that photography had lost its special characteristic of avoiding all attempts at finding an unambiguous definition, only to reappear in a new way, a new form, differently than before. It began to demand a new position as it was becoming increasingly compatible with the system of art institutions, against which it had been used as a weapon for so long (see to that Amelunxen, Hubertus von. “Photography after Photography, the Terror of the Body in Digital Space.” Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age. Edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen, Stefan Ingelhaut and Florian Rötzer, Amsterdam: G&B Arts, 1996. p. 115.). Amelunxen was not mistaken, although, quite evidently, it continues to raise a problem how to clearly define the position of the extremely diverse initiatives, ways of usage and the resulting artworks, even within this institutional system. In his proposal, Osborne avoids this by attempting to define only the works of art he calls post-conceptual, disregarding the ’medium’ (or, rather, assigning it a secondary importance), which is freely selectable, and the selection of which is always dependent on the artistic proposition to be expressed; that is, the aesthetic formulation in itself may not be either its origin or its purpose.
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[8] Horányi, Attila, and Katalin Tímár, (editors). Dokumentum, special issue of Ex Symposion, 2000/32-33.
[9] Pécsi Műhely was a group of artists around the artist and teacher Ferenc Lantos active in the 1970s in the Hungarian town, Pécs, which was also the birth place of Marcell Breuer and Victor Vasarely. In early years their work was characterized by abstract geometrical forms as a consequence of strong constructivist influence and inspiration of the Bauhaus. From the early 1970s they turned to land art projects, performance and used the forms of conceptual art, however, in a highly ironic way. They used photography and film, sometimes video recordings not just as a means of documentation of their performances or other artworks, but also as an independent medium to express their concepts.
[10] See, for example, Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du réel: 2002.
[11] It was not entirely without any precedence: even decades earlier, numerous photobooks were published in Japan, for example, by Araki Nobuyoshi or later from Rinko Kawauchi.