Exhibitions

MTI Photo - 50 Years of Pictures

31/Oct/2006 - 19/Nov/2006

The MTI Photo Contest, one of the citadels of Hungarian photojournalism, was founded a half century ago, in the spring of 1956, when the government resolved to merge the Hungarian Telegraph Office with the Hungarian State Photo Corporation. The resulting studio gained a reputation that spanned Europe, serving for decades as an important base for the training of professional photojournalists and advertising photographers, and as a documentor of important events and the colourful reality of day-to-day life in Hungary.

Over many years, 250 artists identifiable by name filed some thirteen million original photonegatives and nearly five million sample photographs in the MTI Photoarchives on the Buda hilltop of Naphegy. Today, the collection remains one of the largest in Europe. In addition to images of political, economic, and cultural events, this enormous photographic collection includes tens of thousands of photographs of scenes from everyday life, previously well-known people, buildings, streets and squares that have long since been transformed, moments fast fading, and the fashions of the times.

Whether the "certified" works of art photographers or the overblown shots that traverse the world's photo archives, these are the pictures that convey permanent values and eternal beauty.

With this exhibition, we hope to pay due homage to the life work of those who diligently compiled the unparalleled material of the MTI photoarchive by offering a selection of both the gems of Hungary's famous photographic laboratories and of images from a broad range of topics in the history of the past half century.

Organised by:
Mihály Gera