by Nicholas Myerberg · 08/03/11
The twentieth century was not always kind to Hungarian-Jewish artists and intellectuals. They lived in an environment that enforced Jewish quotas in education; they were deported alongside their families in the hundreds of thousands by their own government’s police. Those who could emigrate often did.
Robert Capa (via http://www.artknowledgenews.com)
It seems momentarily surprising that the Royal Academy of Arts’ recently-opened exhibition on twentieth century Hungarian photography deals with, for the most part, the works of five Jewish photographers: Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész, Brassaï and Martin Munkácsi. Examining the products of Hungary’s most influential photographers from 1914 to 1989, the exhibition displays the works of some other thirty photographers.
Despite the fact that Capa, Moholy-Nagy, Kertész, Brassaï, and Munkácsi are widely considered to be Hungarian photographers, none of them began their professional photographic careers before leaving Hungary. Considered personae non gratae both for their intellectualism and their Jewish heritage, each abandoned Hungary for more fertile artistic grounds. Capa spent his time in Germany, France, and Spain; Kertész and Brassaï became Parisians. Moholy-Nagy became involved with Bauhaus in Berlin, while Munkácsi ultimately revolutionized fashion photography in New York City.
So, why call it a retrospective on Hungarian photography when the five of the most important figures in twentieth century Hungarian photography did the vast majority of their work outside of Hungarian borders?
Colin Ford, curator at the Royal Academy, tells us that there exists a particular Hungarian aesthetic that runs through each photographer’s works, despite the fact that they worked in different periods, in different countries, and with different photographic goals. Ford, cited in Diane Smith’s piece on the exhibition in the British Journal of Photography, remarks that he “could look at most images in this exhibition and begin to detect a Hungarian aesthetic,” suggesting that something essentially Hungarian can be detected in works as diverse as Kértesz’s street photography and Moholy-Nagy’s modernist pieces.
The exhibition ends in 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union. Again in Smith’s article, Ford notes that “after the Berlin Wall came down and the world began to globalise, art and photography became global too. [These days] you might be able to tell where a photograph has been taken, but they are all taken in the same style.”
While art forms the world over may have homogenized, Hungary’s political climate seems to still be as hostile and counter-revolutionary as it was in decades past. With the failure of Hungary’s socialist-liberal governments from 2002-2010, reactionary groups have began to dominate Hungarian political discourse. Through a series of calculating political moves, one particular reactionary group—Fidesz—has seized power throughout the country.
The Boston Review‘s Paul Hockenos has written an interesting essay on Paul Lendvai, an outspoken critic of the Fidesz government, detailing why, precisely, Fidesz has found a home in Hungary.
Read Hockenos’ essay here.
For more on Hungary, read Habitus’ Budapest issue here.
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