Budapest Anno... / György Klösz / Picture photographs in the studio and outside / Corvina, 1979 / Hardcover

ISBN-10: 9631304299 

ISBN-13: 9789631304299

Printed in Hungary

Photography is not reckoned among the most significant of the major inventions that have shaped the modern world. Yet, without it there would be no Alm, the prome would not be what it in, and a number of sciences would lack an important aid. This invention has created a new era in visual culture or. in brief, culture, ance vision is a sense of unrivalled importance
Photography gained ground in Hungary rather quickly. As early as the 1840s, a Hungarian invention helped to perfect Daguerre's process. Before long, photography became a representational art in its own right, and attained not inconsiderable artistic level in this country. Hungary has given the world quite a few portrait photographers and photo reporters, including internationally recognized names such as Brassai and Capa György Kloss never enjoyed world-wide reputation. Nevertheless, he played a valuable part in the cultural history of Budapest. He ant up his studio in 1867 in the city of Peat, has enterprise soon being joined by his son. who had graduated from the School of Graphic Art Within a few decades, the photographic studio became one of the country's major graphic invalidations and not much later a pioneering printing shop. György Kloss and Son Ltd. was still in existence up until the nationalization of printing pommes in 1948. Quo might caly wonder whether the founders were aware that they were not only inscribing their names in the history of Hungarian industry, but were also fulfilling an equally important mission with what were then known as Anzichts photo graphs, and that the glass plates made in their time for typographic multiplication and commercial purposes would one day be regarded as artistic and historical relics of great value. Just as Rudolf Alt's colored lithographic plates have preserved for us the mid-19th century twin cities of Pest-Buda, so these photographe have done the same for the Budapest of the final two decades of the last and the beginning of the present century. The industrial entrepreneur has thus become an often quoted authority in the Hungarian press: in a sense we all see an epoch-and not just any epoch-of the capital city's history through his eyes.

The foundation year of 1867 is also a decisive date in Hungarian history. The lawlessness, the savage lerror and the bureaucratic oppression that followed the overthrow of the 1848-1840 Revolution and War of Independence had ended. The Hungarian ruling clasans and the House of Habsburg negotiated the Ausgleich, which brought about a dualist Austro-Hungarian Monarchy whose constitution, if not democratic, widened the road for middleclass development.

• Publisher: Corvina
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 9631304299
• ISBN 13: 9789631304299
• Binding: Hardcover