Brassaï: The Hungarian Documents. A Chronology in Letters 1940–1984
Brassaï: The Hungarian Documents. A Chronology in Letters 1940–1984

Summary/Abstract: As co-editor of the series History of Hungarian Photography, published by the Museum of Hungarian Photography in Kecskemét, I have worked on the oeuvre of almost fifty Hungarian photographers over some twenty years. The series has included several photographers who left Hungary when quite young, such as André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Márton Munkácsi and Robert Capa. Most recently, my colleagues and I have spent two years studying the life and work of Brassaï (born in 1899 as Gyula Halász), including research on his relatives and friends, alive or deceased. During this project, two events helped to place Brassaï’s work in an entirely new light. The first of these was a 2006 auction in France, where 550 vintage Brassaï photographs were sold to private collectors, dealers, galleries and public collections for tens of thousands of euros, the first such auction since the deaths of Brassaï (1984) and his widow Gilberte (2005). The second event was an unexpected stroke of luck, of the kind any museum will experience only once. As in a fairy tale, a man arrived in Budapest from Bras¸ov in Transylvania, after a 12-hour train journey, carrying two enormous, musty-smelling folders. Opening the folders, we found 221 original Brassaï letters, along with postcards, early drawings, signed photos, newspaper clippings—a total of 637 items, which were offered to us at a very reasonable price. Although the museum was unable to purchase the material, their possessor donated forty letters to the museum, and we acquired copies of the other documents as well.

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