Martin Munkácsi

"All great photographs today are snapshots." (Martin Munkácsi)

 Martin Munkácsi, A shot at all costs! Long Island, 1935 (Self-Portrait)

Martin Munkácsi (1896-1963), born in Kolozsvar, Austro-Hungary, was a photographer who worked in Germany (1928–34) and, since 1934, in the United States. Lipot Mermelstein, was an artisan who changed his name to Munkácsi to avoid anti-semitic discrimination. Self-taught, Martin worked since 1912 as a sports reporter in Budapest, and, in the early 1920s, started to publish his first photos. At the time, sports action photography could only be done in bright light outdoors. His innovation was to make sports pictures as meticulously composed action photographs, which required much artistic and technical skills.

Martin Munkacsi, Motorcyclist, Budapest, 1923

Munkácsi's break-through was to happen upon a fatal crime scene, which he photographed. Those photos affected the outcome of the trial of the accused killer, and gave Munkácsi considerable notoriety. That notoriety helped him get a job in Berlin in 1928, for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, where his first published photo was a race car splashing its way through a puddle. He also worked for the fashion magazine Die Dame. Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung was a weekly magazine with a circulation of 2 million copies. It was Germany's first magazine where stories were told by photos primarily. Muncácsi there worked alongside with the ingenious Erich Salomon who was the first who called himself a "Bildjournalist".

 

Martin Munkácsi, Strand, 1930

More than just sports and fashion, Munkácsi photographed Berliners, rich and poor, in all their activities. He traveled to Turkey, Sicily, Egypt, London, New York, and Liberia, for photo spreads in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. The speed of the modern age and the excitement of new photographic viewpoints enthralled him, especially flying. There are air-to-air photographs of a flying school for women; there are photographs from a Zeppelin, including the ones on his trip to Brazil, where he crosses over a boat whose passengers wave to the airship above.

Martin Munkácsi, Jumping fox terrier, ca. 1930

In 1932, the young Henri Cartier-Bresson saw the Munkácsi photograph Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika (below), taken on a beach in Liberia. Cartier-Bresson later said, "For me this photograph was the spark that ignited my enthusiasm. I suddenly realized that, by capturing the moment, photography was able to achieve eternity. It is the only photograph to have influenced me. This picture has such intensity, such joie de vivre, such a sense of wonder that it continues to fascinate me to this day."

 Martin Munkácsi, Boys running into the surf at Lake Tanganyika , 1930

On March 21, 1933, he photographed the fateful "Day of Potsdam" (below), where Chancellor Adolf Hitler and President Paul von Hindenburg heralded the fatal alliance between German fascism and Prussian military. The "Day of Potsdam" is a symbol for the disastrous relationship between National Socialism and Prussianism and lead to the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave the Nazis full legislative powers, even allowing deviations from the constitution. On assignment for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, he also photographed Hitler's inner circle - ironically because he was a Jew and a foreigner.

 Martin Munkácsi, “Tag von Potsdam” – The German Army marches out. Potsdam , March 21, 1933 

In 1934, the Nazis nationalized the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, fired its Jewish editor-in-chief, Kurt Korff, and replaced its innovative photography with propaganda. Munkácsi then left for New York, where he signed on, for a substantial $100.000, with Harper's Bazaar, becoming the best paid photographer of the world. He was no longer just a pioneer, he was a star too. A virtuoso bohemian from Europe. 

Martin Munkácsi, Lucile Brokaw, Harper's Bazaar, 1933

Innovatively, he often left the studio to shoot outdoors, on the beach, on farms and fields, at an airport. His portraits include Katharine Hepburn,  Jean Harlow, Jane Russell, and Louis Armstrong. Richard Avedon said of Munkácsi, "He brought a taste for happiness and honesty and a love of women to what was, before him, a joyless, loveless, lying art. Today the world of what is called fashion is peopled with Munkácsi's babies, his heirs." Munkacsi's art quickly became everybody's. So, without the insurance of a significant artistic reputation, being a photographer celebrity, building a house on Long Island (1939), having a shiny lifestyle that includes regular horse rides in Central Park with his first daughter Alice - he was already right on the way to a cold and unfair end. 

Martin Muncácsi, The last rays of sunshine, 1929

Munkácsi died in poverty and controversy. Several universities and museums declined to accept his archives, and they were scattered around the world. Berlin's Ullstein Archives and Hamburg's F. C. Gundlach collection are home to two of the largest collections of Munkácsi's work. In 2007, the International Center of Photography mounted an exhibit of Munkácsi's photography titled, Martin Munkácsi: Think While You Shoot. In 2009, the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City staged a joint exhibit of photographs by Edward Steichen and Munkácsi.

 Martin Munkacsi, Dog market, England, 1932

"My trick—is there one? Well, perhaps a bitter youth with many changes of occupation, with the necessity of trying everything from poetry to berry picking. These difficult early years probably constitute the sources of my modest photographic activity." (Martin Munkácsi)

 Martin Munkacsi, At 100 Kilometers - Driver in Hungarian Tourist Trophy Race, 1929

"To see in a thousandth of a second what indifferent people come close to without noticing—that is the principle of photographic reportage. And in the thousandth of a second that follows, to take the photo of what one has seen—that is the practical side of reportage." (Martin Munkácsi)

 Martin Munkácsi, Untitled, 1930s

 Martin Munkácsi, Beduin, Egypt, 1929

 Martin Munkácsi, The Goalkeeper, 1928

Martin Munkácsi,Untitled, c. 1928

Martin Muncácsi, Leni Riefenstahl, 1931

Martin Munkacsi, Leni Riefenstahl, 1931

 Martin Munkácsi, Tennis player Gottfried Freiherr von Cramm and his wife Elisabeth, 1930

Martin Munkácsi, Frida Kahlo und Diego Rivera, Mexiko, 1934

Martin Munkácsi, The Munich flying school. Boxing as fitness training, 1928 

 Martin Munkácsi, Katharine Hepburn, 1930s

 Martin Munkácsi, Martin Munkácsi in Zeppelin Lz 127, 1932

 Martin Munkácsi, Parasols, 1928

 Martin Munkácsi, The Happy Family – The Poor Relative, 1955

Robert Capa

It's not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian. (Robert Capa) 

Gerda Taro, Robert Capa, Segovia Front, Spain 1937

Robert Capa (1913-1946) was born as Endre Friedmann in Budapest, Hungary. Aged seventeen, because of his and Kati Horna's leftist student activities, Friedmann was arrested by the Hungarian secret police but released the following day on the condition that he leave Hungary after finishing the school year. In July of 1931, he moved to Berlin, where he enrolled at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik as a student of journalism. Only a couple of months later, he learned that because his parents' dressmaking business had been badly hurt by the worldwide economic depression, they could no longer send him money for tuition, room, and board.

Robert Capa, Retreat of the International Brigades, Montblanch, near Barcelona, October 1938

In 1932, a friend helped him obtain a job as darkroom assistant at Dephot, the first cooperative photojournalist agency. The agency's director, Simon Guttmann, was a friend of Walter Benjamin, and, since 1928, also was the employer of Otto Umbehr (Umbo). Guttmann, recognized Capa's talent and, in December, sent him to Copenhagen to photograph Leon Trotsky delivering a lecture to Danish university students. Capa smuggled his inconspicuous Leica into the stadium, positioned himself near to where Trotsky was speaking, and clandestinely snapped a series of photographs that captured the energy of the drama of the moment, so much so that Berlin’s Der Weltspiegel devoted a full page to Capa's photographs. It was his first published story.

Robert Capa, Leon Trotsky lecturing on the Russian revolution, Copenhagen, 27 November 1932

After Hitler had assumed dictatorial powers in 1933, Capa fled Berlin for Paris, where he would struggle for several years before becoming a successful photojournalist. In 1934, Capa met Gerda Taro, a German Jewish refugee who became his lover and business manager. During this time, Friedman began calling himself Robert Capa. In August of 1936, he and Gerda Taro set out for Spain to document the two-week-old Spanish Civil War from the perspective of the Anarcho-Syndicalists. Capa photographed in Barcelona and on the Aragon front, then went on to the Huesca front, until he finally arrived at Cordoba, where he took the picture that would be his most famous. It shows a  Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) Militiaman who had just been shot and is in the act of falling to his death:

Robert Capa, Falling Republican Militiaman, Spain 1936

It appeared in Vu, No. 447, on 23 September 1936. The picture occupied the upper left half of a double-page spread entitled La Guerre Civile en Espagne. Responsible for the layout was Alex Liberman, later art director of the American Vogue, who thus was the first to recognize the visual power of the photograph. In July of 1937, while Capa attended to business in Paris, Taro covered the fighting at Brunete, west of Madrid. During a confused retreat, she was fatally injured by a Loyalist tank. In September, Capa made his first trip to the United States, to visit his mother and brother Cornell in New York and to negotiate a contract with Life magazine. In 1938. Capa spent seven months in China with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens documenting Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion.

Robert Capa, Departure of Chiang Kai-shek's German military advisors. Hankow, 1938

In 1938, Capa covered the fall of Barcelona. After the end of the Spanish Civil War, in March, he photographed the defeated and exiled Republican soldiers in internment camps in France. He then worked on various stories in France. After the outbreak of World War II, he sailed for New York, where he began to work on miscellaneous stories for Life.  After the United States had entered the war, Capa crossed the Atlantic in a convoy carrying American planes to England, and worked on numerous stories about the Allied war effort in Britain. In 1943, Capa covered the Allied victories in Tunisia, the conquest of Sicily, and the liberation of Naples.

Anom., Robert Capa in Naples, 1943, with Contax II 

Capa's most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach, armed with two Contax II cameras. He took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom, and only eleven frames were recovered. Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film.

Robert Capa, Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment seek shelter from German machine-gun fire in shallow water behind "Czech hedgehog" beach obstacles, Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944

Capa then accompanied American and French troops until the liberation of Paris. In December of 1944, he covered the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. In 1945, Capa parachuted with American troops into Germany, and chronicled the Allied capture of Leipzig and Nuremberg. Some months later Capa became the lover of Ingrid Bergman, who was travelling in Europe entertaining American soldiers. In December 1945, Bergman tried to persuade him to marry her, but Capa didn't want to live in Hollywood, and their relationship ended in 1946.

Robert Capa, Spanish Civil War, Barcelona 1936. The boy is wearing a cap of the Steel Battalions, of the "Union de Hermans Proletarios" (Union of Proletarian Brothers), an anarchist militia.

After the war, Capa became an American citizen. In 1947, together with his friends Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger, and William Vandivert, Capa founded Magnum, a photo agency run as a photographers' cooperative. He spent a month traveling in the Soviet Union with his friend John Steinbeck, and also visited Czechoslovakia and Budapest. Between 1948 and 1950, Capa made three trips to Israel. On the first, he photographed the declaration of Israel's independence and covered the fighting that followed. On the two subsequent trips, he concentrated on the plight of refugees arriving in the country. He also visited Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia and photographed the former concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Robert Capa, Ain Karin, a Transylvanian Jew who had spent nine years in Nazi concentration camps, arriving in Israel in 1949

From 1950, Capa lived in Paris and served as president of Magnum, devoting much time to the agency's business and to the recruitment and promotion of young photographers. Because of allegations that he had been a communist, the U.S. government suspended his passport for several months in 1953, during which time he was unable to travel on work assignments.

Robert Capa, Vietnam, 1954

In 1954, while travelling in Japan, Capa received a request from Life to fill in for its photographer in Indochina. He arrived in Hanoi early in May. From there he travelled to Luang Prabang, Laos, to photograph the wounded French soldiers who had been captured at Dien Bien Phu and released by the Vietminh. On May 25, he accompanied a French convoy whose mission was to evacuate two indefensible outposts in the Red River delta. While the convoy was halted at one point, Capa wandered with a detachment of soldiers into a field beside the road. He stepped on a landmine, and was killed with his camera in his hand. "This war is like an actress who is getting old. It is less and less photogenic and more and more dangerous", Capa had said before.

Lajos Vajda

Lajos Vajda, c. 1935 

 

An Immorality

by Ezra Pound (1917)

 

Sing we for love and idleness,

Naught else is worth the having.

Though I have been in many a land,

There is naught else in living.

And I would rather have my sweet,

Though rose-leaves die of grieving,

Than do high deeds in Hungary

To pass all men's believing.

 

Lajos Vajda (1908-1941) was born in Zalaegerszeg, a town in western Hungary, to a family of Jewish descent. Hiss father was employed as a judicial clerk at the district court. His uncle, Mihály Vajda, became an important figure in Lajo's life. Mihály Vajda worked as a journalist for the liberal Hungarian newspaper Az Est, serving for some years as its Paris correspondent. It was in his uncle's library that Lajos developed an appreciation for art and  reading.

 Lajos Vajda, Self-Portrait in a Mask, 1935

In 1916, the family moved to Belgrade where Vajda continued his primary education and became acquainted with Serbian orthodox churches. The icons and the atmosphere in the churches greatly influenced him. Lajos continued his education at a German-speaking school, where he was an outstanding student. By this time, he had native proficiency in Serbian and German, and spoke Hungarian at home. The poverty-stricken family returned to Hungary in 1923, and settled in the small town of Szentendre. One year later, Lajos enrolled in a Budapest art school run by the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association. Aged 17, during one of his painting trips, he got a bad chill. Complications arose in the form of tuberculosis, and he was operated seven times. In 1927, Vajda enrolled at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Arts, becoming a pupil of István Csók. 

 Lajos Vajda, Tower and Still-Life, 1937

Vajda and some other students of István Csók and János Vaszary established a group with a passion for modern art. Modelled on the French "Les Fauves", they called themselves "Vadak", or "Wild Ones". At this time that Vajda came into contact with Lajos Kassák, who promoted Hungarian Modernism. At the end of the 1920s, Vajda developed a fascination with Russian Constructivism and Socialist doctrine. He joined the Munka Kör (Work Circle), a group of artists, intellectuals and workers who shared a belief in an artistic renewal that was to coincide with a revolution in society.

Lajos Vajda, Tiger and Lillies, 1933

In 1930, Vajda traveled to Paris, where he lived for more than three years. He developped there an appreciation for film and began to produce photomontages like the above Tiger and Lillies. Most of the works produced in Paris are unknown  - apart from about a dozen montages. Vajda later recalled being close to starvation on several occasions during his stay in France.

 Szentendre

Vajda returned to Hungary in 1934. He spent his summers in Szentendre, a small town and art colony on the Danube. Following in the footsteps of the composers Belá Bártok and Zoltán Kodály, Vajda drew inspiration from the archaic Serbian, Slavic and Hungarian motifs that he encountered on local tombstones and in the architecture of homes and churches in Szentendre. Being without any income, Vajda was dependent on the financial support of his family. In 1935, he met Júlia Richter, a student from Bratislava, who was studying at the College of Applied Art. They got married in 1938, and their relationship lasts until Vajda's death. 

 Lajos Vajda, Houses in Szentendre with Blue Sky, 1935

In 1937, Vajda rented a studio in Budapest, but continued to spent the summer months living and working in Szentendre. After a period of great activity, he held his first exhibition at his studio in 1937. A critical review stated: "Lajos Vajda takes on a tragic artistic position, doing so with a stark consistency that is unusual in Hungary. This is modern catacomb art. We see fantastic hieroglyphics and dark mementos. Something is afoot in this Europe with a dishevelled soul."

 Lajos Vajda, Floating Houses, 1937

Towards the end of the 1930s, Vajda became increasingly isolated. He had lost his believe in the Munka Kör and started creating barren, nightmarish landscapes inhabited by devilish birds, apocalyptic monsters, gnomes, and ghastly human and vegetable forms. Vajda's later work, dating from 1939 and 1940, consists of large drawings in ink and charcoal with little colour. They are his final depictions of a demonic world.

 Lajos Vajda, Mask and Moon, 1938

In 1940, Vajda was drafted to the Hungarian Labour Service (Munkaszolgálat), the required military substitution for Jewish men, who were no longer permitted to serve in the regular armed forces since the passing of the Hungarian anti-semitic laws. Lacking warm clothing, Vajda got a severe pneumonia, and was sent back to Budapest, where he was hospitalized for eight months amid awful conditions. His wife finally managed to take him to a sanatorium in Budakeszi, where he, aged only 33, died on September 7, 1941. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Budapest.

 Lajos Vajda, Silver Gnome, 1940

In 1943, after Lajos Vajda's death, there was a posthumous exhibition of his works at the Budapest Alkotás House of Art. The opening of the exhibition took place amid apocalyptical circumstances. The visitors fled the exhibition rooms in order to escape an air raid.

 

Hugó Scheiber

 Hugó Scheiber,  Self-portrait with Military Cap, 1917

Hugó Scheiber (1873-1950) was born in Budapest. At the age of eight, he moved with his family from Budapest to Vienna. There, he worked with his father, a sign painter, for the Prater Theatre, Vienna's largest entertainment fair. In 1898, to help support his family after they had returned to Budapest , he started working during the day, attending painting classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Commercial Art School) in the evening. 

 Hugó Scheiber, Carneval, n.d.

In 1900, Scheiber completed his studies, and began to show an  early interest in German Expressionism and Futurism. In 1915 he met Marinetti, who invited him to join the Futurist movement. Because Scheiber's paintings conflicted with academic style of the Hungarian art establishment, his work was virtually ignored in his own country. In 1919, he and his friend Béla Kadar held an exhibition organized by Hévesy in Vienna, which was a great success - so much so that the Budapest Art Museum finally purchased two of his drawings. In 1920, Scheiber returned from Budapest to Vienna. A turning point in Scheiber's career came in 1921 when Herwarth Walden, founder of Germany's leading avant-garde periodical, Der Sturm, and of the Sturm Gallery in Berlin, became interested in Scheiber's work. Scheiber moved to Berlin in 1922, and his paintings soon appeared regularly in Walden's magazine. Exhibitions of his work followed in London, Rome, La Paz, and New York. 

 Hugó Scheiber, Circus (In the Spotlight), c. 1925

Scheiber's move to Germany coincided with a significant exodus of Hungarian artists to Berlin, including Lászlo Moholy-Nagy and Sándor Bortnyik. There had been a major split in ideology among the Hungarian avant-garde. The Constructivist and  leader of the Hungarian avantgarde, Lajos Kassák (painted by Hugo Scheiber in 1930) believed that art should relate to all the needs of contemporary humankind. Thus he refused to compromise the purity of his style to reflect the demands of either the ruling class or socialists and communists. The other camp believed that an artist should be a figurehead for social and political change.

 Hugó Scheiber, Untitled Figure, n.d.

The fall out and factions that resulted from this politicisation resulted in most of the Hungarian avantgardists leaving Vienna for Berlin. Hungarian émigrés made up one of the largest minority groups in the German capital and the influx of their painters had a significant effect on Hungarian and international art. Apart from the political Activists, there were independent Modernists such as Scheiber and Kárdár, who hoped to find fertile ground for their aesthetic and social idealism. Hugo Scheiber, among others, suddenly found himself in the upper echelons of the dynamic Berlin art world.

Hugó Scheiber, Carriage at Night, c. 1930

Another turning point of Scheiber's career came in 1926, with the New York exhibition of the Société Anonyme, organized by Katherine Dreier. Scheiber and other important avantgarde artists from more than twenty-three countries were represented. In 1933, Scheiber was invited by Marinetti to participate in the great meeting of the Futurists held in Rome where he was received with great enthusiasm. Gradually, the Hungarian artists began to return home, particularly with the rise of  Nazism in Germany. Kardar went back from Berlin in about 1932 and Scheiber followed in 1934.

 Hugó Scheiber, Athletic Championship, 1933

Hugó Scheiber died in Budapest in 1950. His work has been shown in many important exhibitions since 1945, and his paintings are regularly sold at Sotheby's and other auction houses. You can see more works of Hugó Scheiber here in my Flickr set.

Sándor Bortnyik

    Sándor Bortnyik, The Twentieth Century, 1927

Sándor Bortnyik (1893-1976) was born in Marosvásárhely, Transylvania (today  Târgu Mureş, Romania). Since 1910 he studied at the Free Art School in Budapest with József Rippl-Rónai und János Vaszary.  Bortnyik was one of the first followers of Lajos Kassák, with his lino-engravings published in the journal MA (Today) in 1918. In 1919, after the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Bortnyik had to emigrate to Vienna. 

 Oskar Schlemmer, Triadisches Ballett (Triadic Ballet), 1922. Costume.

He broke with Kassák in 1922 and moved to Weimar, where he studied the principles of the Bauhaus. Bortnyik participated in De Stijl-Seminr of Theo van Doesberg and was interested in the theatre workshops of Oskar Schlemmer. In Weimar, Bortnyik produced abstract compositions which clearly show Schlemmer's influence:

 Sándor Bortnyik, The New Eve, 1924

In 1923, Bortnyik had his own exhibition in Berlin at Galerie Nierendorf. On his return to Budapest in 1924, he became a founding member, author and set-designer of the Green Ass avant-guard theatre company. Bortnyik also created a number of cutting-edge posters for advertisements in the twenties.

Sandor Bortnyik, Blue-Red Composition, 1919

Based upon the Bauhaus principles Bortnyik opened his own art school in Budapest in 1928. Victor Vasarely was among his pupils. Bortnyik soon became the leading figure of Hungarian advertisement art and Budapest one of its European hot spots. I particularly like the following poster of Robert Berény for the Modiano cigarette paper company:

Robert Berény, Modiano Poster, 1930

After the Second World War Bortnyik taught at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts and was active as the chief editor of the journal Free Art. He died 1976 in Budapest.You can see more of Bortnyik's works here on my Flickr page.