Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century

An image. A deserted footpath in a park, with traces of a heavy rainshower that just ended moments ago. There is nothing unusual about the scene.

But the stability of the image is offset by the slightly tilted camera angle: everything, the benches, the water in the puddles, the trees and the little hut…are going to slide towards the left of the image, out of the frame, until nothing is left. In the foreground there is a big puddle, it has a strong presence, taking up half of the picture frame. In the puddle is the reflection of a tree, more lucid than reality. We don’t see the tree itself, only the reflection, in fact not even the entire reflection: the tree is half eaten up by the dry bits of the ground. Soon the puddle will dry up; the tree will die before autumn comes. Further down the footpath, a person is carrying a ship across the footpath. It is almost surreal, a ship with legs, a ship walking on the ground. But still that man behind the camera wants to board that ship, wait a minute, he shouts, take me with you, take me home. But that ship, with its pretty white sails, it has no ears. The shouts leap off the lips into thin air, disperse into particles, die. The man is unable to cross that puddle, as vast as the ocean that separates him from his homeland. He watches as the ship walks away. That tree, the dying reflection of a tree, is his only consolation.

Andre Kertesz, Homing Ship (1967)

This is a late work of Kertesz, and it is one of my favourite images in the exhibition Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century. Perhaps it provides the key to the unresolved mystery: just why did so many great Hungarian photographers made their brilliant appearance on the international stage in the early part of the last century? Some of them started as amateurs, but they all achieved technical excellence and also became immensely influencial in almost all the genres that you can think of: from war photography and photojournalism (most notably Robert Capa) to abstract and fashion photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson cites Munkasci’s Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika as his sole influence, Kertesz is often hailed as the father of photojournalism, and Capa’s war photographs count among the most iconic images of the events that they document. This extraordinary phenomenon is substantiated by Robert Capa’s remark: ‘To be a good photographer it is not enough to have skills. You also have to be Hungarian.’ Clearly there is something about being Hungarian that makes a difference.

The generation of Hungarians born before World War I, including most of the photographers featured in this show, were witnesses to a particularly turbulent period of their country’s history. On top of the traumatic wartime experience shared by many other countries, Hungary also suffered from the humiliation of losing 72% of its territory and 66% of its population after WWI. Not only did this mean that a large portion of its population became displaced overnight, this peace settlement also dealt a great blow to the country’s industries and deprived Hungary of its only seaport. This crippled the country’s economy. After the war, a coup in 1919 resulted in a short-lived Communist regime, which started the ‘Red Terror’ immediately. The Communists were driven away only five months later, only to be replaced by Rightists who now set out to revenge by starting the White Terror, marking the country’s steering towards anti-Semitism.

It was during this period that the five major photographers (Kertesz, Moholy-Nagy, Munkasci, Brassai, Capa) featured in this exhibition, who were all Jewish, chose to leave their home country. But Hungary’s misfortune did not end in the 1920s, it was devastated by WWII and was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war. Soon it became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, and began a violent purge of opponents with instruments such as secret police and labour camps. Dissatisfaction of Communist rule culminated in the 1956 Revolution, which ended with the violent Soviet suppression in the same year and the reinforcement of Soviet rule. The first two and last two parts of the exhibition are swamped with records of Hungary’s painful history, mostly by photographers who chose to stay in the country.

Rudolf Balogh, Stud (1930) – Balogh was an advocate of a kind of photography that communicate the Hungarian national character, and led to the flourishing of the ‘Magyar style’, which is characterised by a romantic return to the pastoral roots of Hungary.

Erno Vadas, Harvest (1937) – This image seems to be a new take of Millet’s famous painting (The Gleaners, 1857). In the age of machinery, eighty years after the latter was painted, Vadas transformed the peasants into heroic figures through his lens. The image, with a yin-yang composition, is perfectly balanced, but is also bursting with energy. It is perhaps an allegory of the relationship between peasants and nature.

Erno Vadas, Procession (1937) – Another record of Hungary’s cultural tradition, coupled with an unusual viewpoint and compositional balance.

Laszlo Fejes, Wedding (1965) – This photograph won the World Press Photo Award, but also resulted in the ban of the photographer from publishing in Hungary because it shows the facade of a damaged building, an evidence of the 1956 anti-Communist uprising.

Turning their back on their home country to avoid imminent danger, the photographers made the decision to move abroad. But speaking Hungarian as their native language must have accentuated their sense of isolation in a foreign country, for unlike most European tongues, Hungarian is a Uralic language rather than an Indo-European one. It must have been particularly hard for Hungarians to pick up a new language, be it French, German or English. In fact, none of the five photographers mastered the language of his adopted country. In the case of Robert Capa, he only became a photographer because it was the closest thing to journalism ‘for anyone who found himself without a language.’ I think only someone who has lived in a linguistically foreign country could possibly understand the pain of living ‘without a language’ and the anxiety to integrate into a new society. Perhaps this explains my instant connection with the sense of intense isolation, insecurity and despair expressed in Kertesz’s image described above.

Brassai, Picasso – Brassai is best known for his photographic book ‘Paris de nuit’, which consists of many images of the city which had become iconic with time. When he first arrived in Paris he tried to work as a journalist and only took photographs to supplement his articles. He made many artist friends in Paris, including Picasso, Dali and Matisse, and this is one of the many photographs and he took of them.

Robert Capa, Woman, Who Had a Child with a German Soldier, Being Marched Through the Street (1944) – Unlike the combat photographs for which Capa is best known, this image shows the hidden atrocities of the war. The subject is the plight of the woman at the centre of the image, who is being publicly humiliated and marched towards an unknown fate for ‘having a child with a German soldier’. It makes clear Capa’s humanistic concerns and questions the categories of perpetrators and victims in the most poignant way.

Martin Munkasci, Lucile Brakow, Harper’s Bazaar (1933) – The first image that Munkasci shot for Harper’s Bazaar after he moved to America. He brought his interest in speed and movement to fashion photography, instilling energy and liveliness into the genre.

Martin Munkasci, Boys Running into the Surf at Lake Tanganyika (1933) – Henri Cartier-Bresson on this image: ‘I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over.’

Looking at the images, one is bound to realise that there is very little that link the work of these photographers. Each had developed his own very distinctive style in his chosen genre. It is only their sensitivity to the medium and creativity fed by their hopeless solitude (to borrow the words of Arthur Koestler) that betray their common origin.

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century was on show at Royal Academy of Art, Sackler Wing of Galleries until 2 October’, 2011