What we see is an ordinary, casual, amateur photograph. Perhaps a boring one. Nothing "happens" in the picture that is in any way out of the ordinary. It lacks that certain something worth seeing that makes us want to take pictures ourselves, or makes us look with interest at those taken by our friends. It may strike us that the scene it depicts is not a recent one, but the style of the period does not evidence any exotic antiquity that immediately attracts the attention and fires the imagination. The situation was obviously of interest to the person who used the camera; he knew the person caught on film, where things took place and what was happening at the time. He knew the context in which the picture was taken. Personal snapshots like this are ten-a-penny nowadays too.

But perhaps this is the very reason why the picture is fascinating. Peace, summer, languorous tranquillity; in the quiet of this uneventfulness we can hear the soft rustle of the more subtle details. These are minor, startling, disquieting features that would otherwise be swept away in the hubbub, in the momentum of events. On the one hand we have the "subject matter", which can be described, spoken of: what does the picture depict? The garden terrace of a restaurant; checkered tablecloths on round tables; in the foreground, a woman in a hat. Judging by the style, it must be around 1930. In the background, the solitary figure of a man at a table, and behind him a balustrade, greenery. What else? Garden chairs, the edge of a sun-shade, the shoulders of another man, oleander growing in a tub. A salt pot or ashtray on the principal subject's table. The intense sunshine of the afternoon. All this, as I already said, is not in itself of great interest. So much for that aspect of it.

On the other hand, however, if it were not for this scene, those small details which do merit attention would have nothing to hang on to. This is the plastic (artistic) quality of our photograph. Just as when a painter chooses as his subject matter a corner of his studio, or sets up a still life, this merely serves as the pretext for him to present whatever it is he wants to say as an artist. In other words, it is not the subject of the painting that is important: but the underlying content within the subject .

In their most successful pictures, the great photographers saw something extra in a particular moment, in that situation, something that the majority of people, and even those involved, were not aware of. A fortuitous constellation, inspiration, talent, practice, the ever observant eye of the photographer, or an extraordinary moment: all of these, together or separately, may play a role in bringing a work of art to birth. The amateur photographer is not looking for this special something, for the hidden, underlying traits; his objective is a private one. Usually it is to prolong, or to capture some joyful occasion or event. But very occasionally the characteristics that turn something into a work of art are present, independently of the photographer's intentions, and they find their way into the picture. One does not have to be of the same era to be able to recognize these characteristics; indeed, the passage of time, the fact that one does not know the specific situation that the photographer is recording, can actually help one to recognize a rare example of excellence in an amateur photograph.

When we see a painting or photograph depicting a person, and especially a face, we are generally incapable of transcending it, of seeing the image independently of the person. No matter how discerningly we focus our attention on the picture's artistic or stylistic qualities, the portrayal of facial expression, of gesture is so familiar from real life that it affects us at an elemental level. The enigmatic expression on the face of the central figure in our photograph is a small but significant element of what makes the picture fascinating. The closed eyes beneath the shady brim of the hat, the half-open lips. Was this languor due to the situation or the mood of the moment? Or was it simply because of the summer heat? Or was it perhaps an indication of her feelings towards the person taking the picture? Perhaps it was just that the click of the shutter sounded just as she was saying something. What was it she was saying? And how old is this woman? She could be anything between 25 and 40. The gloved hand resting in her lap indicates the studied elegance of the petty bourgeois and contrasts sharply with the naturalness of her face. There is an air of mystery about this figure. Not knowing the exact circumstances of the moment of exposure allows our imagination to take flight. And the gesture the man is making adds to these strange feelings. Why is he covering his face? Why is he concealing his identity? Who could he be, this man who does not want to be present then and there, and yet who is (was) clearly and without a doubt there? Is he merely shading his face from the sun? Is there a connection between the two figures, or is it simply the fickle image that has thrown them into rapport? We feel a temptation to weave some romantic story around the picture.

All these details we have observed would disintegrate and vanish into nothingness if it were not for the classical compositional discipline that holds them together. One element of a masterpiece. Of all the hundreds of possible moments and countless possible situations, the camera's shutter happened to open just then and there, where the constellation of details made an ideal whole. It was not the sharp eye and conscious choice of an experienced professional photographer composing the disparate elements into a unified whole. It was a fluke, sheer luck on the part of an amateur photographer. The luck is really ours, of course, who are looking at the picture many years later. The unknown photographer who took this picture no doubt sought simply to record what he saw, to make a faithful, perhaps an ideal, portrait of his model. Against his intentions, additional, unwanted elements filtered into the picture in the form of extraneous happenings, which for us are the things which make this photograph extraordinary. The dark background of vegetation throws the sun-drenched elements of the picture into relief and gives definition to their contours. If one were to take away the corner of the sun-shade which accidentally appears in the picture, the whole would lose its balance and would be the poorer for it. By a piece of good fortune the mistake frequently made by amateurs, and which nearly happens here, does not: if the oleander branches had been any brighter they would have stuck out of the top of the hat like antlers. The balustrade of the terrace breaks up the image as if it had been a consciously included element of the picture's structure. The way in which the larger forms are set out could not be more harmonious, and yet it does not give the impression of being contrived. An ideal balance of coincidences and compositional rules. The technical precision and razor-sharp drawing, however, are a credit to the photographer.

The fascination of old photographs also has a part. It is not only turn-of-the-century photos that are old. This is a picture of the world before I was born, of a minute corner of that age-old world. It is the fascination of ambivalence, of the fact that we see a realistic picture of a particular person, place and situation, but of a reality that no longer exists. "He has died and he will die"— as Roland Barthes said while looking at pictures of a man condemned to death. But this is true of all old photographs. The melancholy that this awareness arouses is heightened by the contrast between that reality which is lost in the depths of time, and the one which is valid in the present because it has been shaped into a beautiful work of art. A tangible document of transience.

A framed copy of the picture sits on my bookcase. It was only after some time that I realized why I was attracted to it, why of all the pictures in the Horus Archive it was this particular image I had chosen. What was the personal experience, beyond the elements I have analysed above, that connected me to a stranger's private photograph? Balilla. That is what came to mind. In the latter years of the war, in summer I used to walk up Gugger Hill in Buda to the restaurant there, with my parents. (The restaurant at the look-out was destroyed during the siege of the city.) One had to climb up stairs a storey high to reach the restaurant's terrace, built high up on the steep hillside. I would have drunk balilla, or raspberry soda, there. Balilla in fact had two meanings. It was the name of the only soft drink available at that time, which was sold in funny-shaped clip-stopper bottles. But we also knew that this was the name of Mussolini's black-shirted youth organization, as well as of a small Fiat car. Knowing this gave the drink a wartime flavour that was partly funny and partly rather bizarre. The way the balustrade protrudes, the iron flower-tub standing in the corner, the summer light, all bring back the atmosphere of the restaurant on Gugger Hill, the balilla, these family afternoons of my childhood. Of course, the images in my memory date from a good ten, fifteen years later than those captured in the photo. I wonder, was this picture taken there, or was it somewhere else? We will never know. ß

Translated by Anna Canning