fri 04/10/2024

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century, Royal Academy | reviews, news & interviews

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century, Royal Academy

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century, Royal Academy

The century unfolds through the lens of Hungarian émigrés

André Kertész's 'Lost Cloud': A wistfully memorable image of exile

A subtly haunting and brilliantly composed photograph by André Kertész lives on as a wistfully memorable image of exile: in Lost Cloud, 1937, a small, isolated cloud drifts we know not where next to a New York skyscraper. Kertész is one of the quintet of Hungarian Jewish photographers who are acknowledged as among the greatest of the last century. Kertész, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Capa, Martin Munkácsi and Brassaï are the most familiar among the staggeringly accomplished Hungarian photographers who feature in the Royal Academy’s exhibition Eyewitness.

A subtly haunting and brilliantly composed photograph by André Kertész lives on as a wistfully memorable image of exile: in Lost Cloud, 1937, a small, isolated cloud drifts we know not where next to a New York skyscraper. Kertész is one of the quintet of Hungarian Jewish photographers who are acknowledged as among the greatest of the last century. Kertész, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Capa, Martin Munkácsi and Brassaï are the most familiar among the staggeringly accomplished Hungarian photographers who feature in the Royal Academy’s exhibition Eyewitness.

The quintet were part of a Hungarian diaspora which transformed the intellectual life of many another country

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