25.
“Pages from the history of Hungarian photography”
Paulius Normantas:
Following Sándor Korösi Csoma’s footsteps and dreams
2002, 116 pages, 90 pictures with English summary, HUF 2.200
The Lithuanian photographer, Paulius Normantas traveled through
Kashmir, Tibet, Pakistan, Afganistan, India and theTransyvanian Csomakorös following the footsteps of
an emblematic figure, the Székely-Hungarian Sándor Korösi Csoma and took photographs of the hardly
changing landscapes and people, just as the great traveller could see them. Normantas was the only one,
however, who visited with his camera those places as well, where Csoma only longed to be, in vain. He
visited the Uigurs and could see everything that Csoma could not because of his illness, different
local wars, the weather and the lack of money, the enormous energy and time he spent on the compilation
of the Tibetian dictionary. The oeuvre of Sándor Korösi Csoma has been completed by a Lithuanian
photographer, the real journey has been completed by the dreamed one for the first time here. This book
is not a scientific study, not a travel book but an album of an autonomous artist, in which Normantas
presents in his well-known unmaniputated, documentarist and humanist, lyrical way what we, ordinary
readers could never see without him.