Árpád Szélpál, the Social Photographer

Being influenced by Galilei-Circle and Lajos Kassák, Árpád Szélpál (born in Törökszentmiklós-1897, died in France-1987), was effected by leftist ideology. He worked as a clerk, but he was also occupied with writing avant-garde poems and got acquainted with fine-arts. Upon Lajos Kassák’s advice he deepened his self-educated knowledge about photography. From the autumn of 1929 his reports were published in Népszava Newspaper. In the week-end issues of the newspaper he illustrated his essays about social problems of Budapest with his own photos. Later his essays became frequent. From 1938 there were only a few week-end editions without Szélpál’s social reports. The connection between Szélpál and Népszava had different aspect, too. In 1934 he became literature editor instead of Ede Bresztovszky. He took important role in publishing Attila József’s poems in Népszava.

Before he was forced to leave Hungary (1939), more than a thousand social photos were published in Népszava. The popular newspaper enabled that his photos became well-known. So we can declare that publishing in Népszava, Szélpál can be the most important figure of Hungarian social photography between the two World Wars.

He was sending reports from France to Népszava for a short time, but never returned to Hungary.

During the 1980s a professor from Törökszentmiklós, Dr. Imre Fehér paid special attention to Árpád Szélpál’s works. He published a letter-interview in FotoArt Magazine, so Szélpál’s lifework as a social photographer could become well-known.

Béla Albertini, an expert of Hungarian social photography presents his life and analyses his work as a social photographer. During his researches he was collecting all Szélpál-photos published in Népszava; moreover he prepared a complete bibliography and annotation of his reports. This kind of organisation is also important, because it reflects the lively atmosphere of the newspaper at that time. Namely only a few pieces of original editions were remained from the 1930s.

The Szélpál-monography, based on primer researches shows the best tradition of Hungarian press-photo history. Book-readers can get acquainted with a considerable piece of Népszava’s past.