26.
“Pages from the history of Hungarian photography”
Károly Kincses:
Angelo
2002, 396 pages, 115 pictures, with English summary, HUF 4.000
In this volume we can read about one of the most many-sided, most
talented Hungarian photographers of the 20th century, whose complete life-work has been out of reach,
unprocessed until now. The present volume undertakes to depict his career for the first time, partly in
the form of a study, and partly through presented images. Most of the large-format, painting-style,
bromoil prints from the beginning of Angelo’s career, taken from the 1910’s onward, are stored in the
Museum of Hungarian Photography. His later photographs, taken in the 1930’s transmit a suggestive
atmosphere with the help of distorted, softened lenses, and by laboratorial intervention. Later he
followed the more objective tendencies of modern photography, hereby taking a significant roll in the
formation of the new expression in photography. In his elder years he pictures surrealist visions,
micro-worlds unfolding from the bizarre tracery of materials, thereby breaking with his own stylistic
characteristics, giving birth to an entirely new artistic period. Besides his artistic career, the book
reviews his 60-year-long studio-portrait workmanship, throughout which he took photographs of around
half-a-million people. Additionally, the volume presents his works as a fashion-photographer and as
cameraman. The study is complemented with a list of Angelo’s known exposures, exhibition participations
and a detailed bibliography.