The presence or absence of light, shade and its presentation has been one of the basic issues of photography from the very beginning. If we think it over, shade cannot be a category in photography, since every single photograph is composed by the presence and absence of light. We are convinced, however, that there are photographs, in which shade becomes the most important compositional element. The Hungarian Museum of Photography expected pictures of this sort when invited applications from all over the world to a competition entitled ‘ Shade’.
According to the invitation of applications pictures, objects were expected, which were formed by the interaction of light and and a nontransparent body standing in its way and fixed on any kind of light- sensitive material. We aimed at giving a short description without limiting the theme.
Light and Shade, Darkness and Brightness, Presence and Absence are interrelated, eternal categories. Shade can be seen (is it existent?), yet can be neither heard, nor touched (is it non-existent?). It is the identical duplicate of people, objects getting in its way, still it is able to conform to the space it is thrown to. The most ancient and most imporatant task of photo-graphing should be to seize and present this, and it is, as it can be read in the Vienna Codex from 1416: ‘ it creates shade for itself ’.
Our preliminary expectations were justified by the number and quality of the received photographs. A lot of people found the theme interesting and challenging: to present the relation between light and shade in philosophical terms, which is expressed by the one-line poem by Sándor Weöres: ‘ Shade is the body of absence’ . The 248 applicants from 21 countries sent more than 1000 photographs, among them some really interesting experiments. The received pictures could be presented in an exhibition hall five times bigger than the one we had. As a result of the involuntary selection 203 pictures by 101 artists were exhibited.
The catalogue selects from the exhibited pictures and publishes a study on the cultural history of shade entitled ‘Following Shade’, written by Miklós Peternák