“I cannot see into the future, but I have confidence”
Past, present and planned future of the Museum of Hungarian Photography
MúzeumCafé 49.
The idea of establishing a museum of photography in Hungary is by no means new. In fact, it is one and a half centuries old. In 1862 Ferenc Veress, a university professor and a pioneer of colour photography in Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca in Romania) set out the following message for Hungary’s photographers in the illustrated magazine Ország Tükre (Mirror of the Country): “Our photographers could do a great service to our motherland if they photographed and compiled images of both noted and lesser-known individuals who have excelled in the fields of science, the arts, industry and trade, and were to give them in an album format to the country’s museums. I have had this idea in my mind for years and I am starting to realise it this year.” Yet for a century there were only rare endeavours to collect and exhibit, primarily on the part of some enthusiastic photographers or communities.
In 1934 Simon Neuberger, an elderly master photographer, wrote the following in Hungarian Photography: “Now it is still possible to find for pennies or nothing some old tools and accessories … cameras, partly finished or unfinished pictures, silhouettes, daguerreotypes, etc., in order to establish the foundation of a future photographic museum. I am well aware that all of us are concerned about earning a living at present, yet I still see this struggling generation being obliged to the future generation to rescue these still existing objects from decay. Let us make the foundation for a photographic museum.” At the turn of the 1930s and 1940s photographers István Kerny and Ervin Kankowszky began compiling a collection for a photographic museum and actually founded the Hungarian Photography Museum. A year later 3,199 objects and 950 books were entered in the collection’s inventory. The old plan was again dusted off only in 1957. The Photo Historical Collection of the Association of Hungarian Photographers was established on 1 January 1958. That represented the birth of the basic collection of today’s photography museum, but events progressed slowly in the decades of the post-1956 Kádár era. In 1963 photographers were asked to keep their technical equipment. The Association of Hungarian Photographers began collecting the best works by contemporary Hungarian photographers in 1967-68. The museum, as part of the Hungarian National Gallery, would have been housed in the Pásztor Villa on Gellért Hill in Budapest, but the plan failed. In the last decade of the Kádár era there was a debate over what items in the collection should be displayed, where and how. In the end, the National Gallery turned down hosting the collection. Then a location in Budapest’s city centre was offered, but the ministry was not willing to pay for the purchase of the property instead of the Association of Hungarian Photographers. With the 1989-90 changes, a new situation arose. In autumn 1989 István Gajdócsi, president of the Bács-Kiskun County Council, offered a long neglected, 18th-century building in the centre of Kecskemét. Initially, it was a staging post for the Pest-Szeged postal carriage service, then when the railway opened it became a restaurant. However, in the second half of the 1920s it was converted into an Orthodox synagogue and served as such until 1944. During the decades of communism it functioned as a slaughter house, shop, warehouse and hairdresser’s. Meanwhile, its condition kept deteriorating. A puppet theatre or a venue centre were thought of, but in the end the renovated building came to house the photographic collection. The Hungarian Photographic Foundation was formed to look after the collection in December 1990. István Katona had an important role in establishing the foundation and the museum. Katona, who started off as a communist activist, later worked as a journalist and correspondent, and as the editor-in-chief of the daily Népszabadság around 1974. He advanced as high as head of János Kádár’s secretariat. Throughout his life he took photographs, indeed he had an exhibition primarily of his nature photography. Katona was the president of the Association of Hungarian Photographers from 1986 to 1992. In that period a home was found for the Museum of Hungarian Photography in Kecskemét. The museum opened in December 1991 with Károly Kincses as director. Since 2006 Péter Baki has headed the museum. The present director had a detour before entering the world of photography. He had been interested in it for a long time. Later, on the invitation of photographer Tamás Féner, he attended the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts as an informal student. Finally he continued his studies at the Faculty of Humanities of the József Attila University, writing his Ph.D dissertation on The Relationship between photography and the Hungarian press up to 1945. Besides studying, he worked as a press photographer, organised a school for photographers and was appointed senior lecturer at the Faculty of Arts at Kaposvár University. He has directed the Museum of Hungarian Photography in Kecskemét for ten years. Visitors find themselves immediately in the exhibition hall, the prayer hall of the former synagogue. This 140-square-metre hall is the only one open to the public. Due to the lack of space and for technical reasons, it is not suitable for staging a permanent exhibition about Hungarian photography and its more than 150 years of history. Hence temporary exhibitions are held here. A reference library of 4,500 volumes, a document storage and some work stations can be found in the gallery. One of the walls in the hall is taken up by an open storage of photo-technical historical equipment. The oldest item is a wooden box camera from around 1840, followed by a chronological display showing how photographic equipment developed from the 19th century to the present. Highly regarded items are cameras manufactured in Hungary, including a sophisticated Duflex, which was among the world’s best in the post-1945 years and whose production was allegedly stopped by Rákosi, Hungary’s political leader. The collection includes more than ten vintage prints each by the greatest artists such as André Kertész and Moholy-Nagy, but in the case of internationally famous Hungarians mostly author’s copies are held in the museum. Some 600,000 negative and 250,000 positive copies from the past 150 years are stored. At present the museum has a few thousand visitors annually, but the director thinks that a location in Budapest would attract 50-100,000 visitors a year. Péter Baki has strongly supported the idea that the Museum of Hungarian Photography would become part of the Budapest Liget Project. He was in continuous contact with ministerial commissioner, László Baán. For reasons of functional expectations, Baki likes the cube design proposed for the new museum building.