Károly Kincses set up the Hungarian Museum of Photography in Kecskemét and was the initiator in Budapest of the Hungarian Photographers’ Gallery (Magyar Fotográfusok Háza) in the beautifully restored Manó Mai studio building in Nagymező Street, whose artistic director he became. A specialist and teacher on the history of photography, both Hungarian and foreign, he is the man from whom many curators of photographic collections learnt their trade, and he has also written several studies on the history of the medium.

P. Tibor Sándor is Director of the Budapest Collection of the Municipal Szabó Ervin Library in Budapest, a specialist in local history and himself a photographer, whose work for many years has meant that he has primarily been involved in looking at the history of the city as it is preserved in photographs.

The two authors have taken 56 Hungarian photographers and selected one hundred or so pictures (from the early 1860s to 1984) that are significant for the history of photography and for local history. The photography historian presents the careers of the photographers in alphabetical order. The local historian, meanwhile, takes one or two of the pictures illustrating the work of each photographer and sketches a particular segment of the city’s history through an analysis of these.

Of the hundred and twenty years the book spans, the first third covers the period in which, virtually simultaneously, both the city of Budapest and the art of photography came into adulthood. The political stability which followed the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 led to a boom in construction, with private capital invested principally in apartment blocks. At the same time, Budapest had to demonstrate its status as the Hungarian capital of the Dual Monarchy. Thus the majority of Budapest’s spectacular public buildings, its government offices, courts, schools and university buildings, its Parliament, its Opera and other theatres, railway stations and many of its museums were all built during this period. Two of the city’s largest town planning projects were completed, the construction of Andrássy Avenue and the Nagykörút (Grand Boulevard).

The residents of this rapidly-growing city were open towards technical innovation, which then included photography. The aristocracy and the upper middle class were no longer satisfied with painted portraits or drawings as a record of social events. As their quality steadily improved, photographs were used increasingly in the press. Commercial advertising more and more frequently exploited the opportunities photography afforded. In order to service the tourists visiting the capital and Hungary’s spas, popular with foreign visitors too, large numbers of picture postcards came on the market. Last but not least, in the technical disciplines and the humanities, photography was establishing itself as an instrument for recording facts.

A large number of elegant photographic studios opened up in the city centre and photographers were already beginning to specialize to a certain extent. The photographic portraits of the royal family and the aristocracy were mainly the work of Mór Erdélyi, István Goszleth and Károly Koller. Erdélyi, however, also undertook work for the Royal Hungarian Mail, while some of his cityscapes have a claim to be regarded as the precursors of social photography. The Opera House employed its own photographer. Although photographers such as Károly Divald, Ferenc Kozmata, György Klösz, Béla Gévay produced many portraits, they became famous mainly for their artistic and architectural photography and their cityscapes. Manó Mai was a portrait photographer who specialized in pictures of children, and the venue for an exhibition of the pictures published in this volume was the building where his studio was housed.

Professional associations of photographers were set up and specialist journals were launched. The articles and efforts of Aladár Székely, Olga Máté and most of all József Pécsi led to photography being considered an art form in Hungary at the beginning of this century, a status that was well established by the inter-war period.

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