The Michael Hoppen Gallery as a large collection of Hungarian works, some of which are on display at this years Photo London.
Beginning in the 1930s, the naturally innovative Munkacsi introduced the snapshot aesthetic that was to revolutionise photography forever. His ability to capture spontaneity with such an acute understanding of style, pattern, form and framing made him uniquely influential to numerous subsequent photographers.
Kata Kalman
In 1927, Kàlmàn entered the Alice Madzsar Dance and Movement Art School in Budapest, where by chance she met Kata Sugar, who would later become the other leading artist of the sociographic photography movement, and Ivan Hevesy, photographic aesthete and her future husband. It was Hevesy that initially encouraged her to take up photography in 1931.
István Kerny
István Kerny was an amateur photographer and an active presence in Hungarian photography for sixty years, known for tirelessly experimenting with diverse materials and techniques, including trick photography and montages. Born in Szeged in 1879, he began teaching himself photography in 1894, while still in his teens, eventually taking lessons from a local photographer. He purchased a used photogravure press in 1902 and in 1907 received his first award for participating in an exhibition.
Imre Kinszki
Born in 1901, Imre Kinszki was raised in Budapest, where he studied medicine and published articles on philosophy and politics. In 1920, anti-Semitic legislation set a limit on the number of Jewish students allowed at the university, preventing him from completing his degree; instead he found work as an archivist for the National Association of Industrialists.
Gyula Halász (Brassai) was born on September 9, 1899, in Brassó (Braăov), then part of Hungary, today belonging to Romania. At age three, his family moved to live in Paris, France for a year while his father, a Professor of Literature, taught at the Sorbonne. As a young man, Gyula Halász studied painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest before joining a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, serving until the end of the First World War. In 1920 Halász went to Berlin where he worked as a journalist and studied at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts.
PHOTO LONDON BOOTH B8
19-22 May, Somerset House
