Almost required viewing for all students – beginner, intermediate and advanced – of photography. Among the authors of the 171 original works, we find those like Robert Frank, from whose book, The Americans, we can count on a focus on modern photography.

We present the pictures of Weegee, of Hungarian ancestry, that bear witness to the perversity of the American dream, and of Diane Arbus, whose personages gazing into her camera represent first themselves, and not the strangeness and extremism that is always present. Also appearing in the exhibition is Manuel Álvarez Bravo, without whom contemporary Mexican photography would be unimaginable, and whose mentors included Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. Naturally, his pictures also travel with this exhibition.

Without the photos of Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Walker Evans, not a single volume of universal photo history could have been published in this world. Also in the selection is Roman Vishniac, who recorded the Jews of Poland and the Carpathian Basin in the last moments before their deportation and annihilation, establishing with this an indictment without limits for eternity.

We present a few photos from the volume, Children of a Vanished World. And then there are: Bill Brandt, Lewis Hine, Jacob A. Riis, Dorothea Lange, Aaron Siskind, Marc Riboud, Minor
White, W. Eugene Smith, Lisette Model, Bruce Davidson, Helen Levitt, Irving Penn, and the preeminences of the Czech avant-garde: Jaroslav Rössler, Funke, Drtikol, and Josef Sudek are represented with one or more pictures in the exhibition.

Among the Hungarians in the collection, there are some images from: André Kertész, Márton Munkácsi, Robert Capa, Imre Kinszki, and Angelo.

The lengthy listing is intentional. The roll-call. Because it is bewildering. Because it compels selfexamination. Do I know, do we know enough about this art form? We can have many sorts of answers.

Of course, we know all of this – we are up to our elbows in it. Power to the one who says this, or thinks this. Someone else might say that they have seen a lot of this, separately – but like this, together… And there can also be those who, though they are interested in photography, or even spend a lot on it, or seek it out, have knowledge of it that is sketchy.

Whatever their answer may be, the occasion is now – to become acquainted with the selected pieces of Howard Greenberg’s New York collection. Not in Paris, not at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson; not in Switzerland, in the Musée de l’Elysée; but here, in Budapest, at the Hungarian House of Photography.

Popular, lovable and famous, important – and the most important photos of universal photo history were selected and compiled. Why these and not others? Just because. Just as with every private collection, no matter how much it strives for objectivity, it still fundamentally
reflects the individual taste of its selector.

And though American authors may dominate (careful with this notion: to word it more precisely, we are thinking of authors who became known in the USA, became famous!), it still appears that from the New York gallery, Howard Greenberg saw far off, drawing from quite a broad circle, and whatever appeared in his collection, it had either already been an icon previously, or he helped to make them a part of the canon.

We know that international publicity is needed for pictures, for their authors, collectors with good references, museums of great prestige, and galleries that appear as points of orientation before the individuals and institutions engaged in similar things around the world. Howard Greenberg and the gallery that he has operated for decades, just as the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, are such. We still have things to learn.

I recommend this exhibition, this collection, for the young and old alike, for those who are still innocent in photography and for those slick old foxes, I recommend it for those wishing to learn and for those who teach – because just such an opportunity will hardly occur here in the near future.

The pictures of authors found in thick photo albums, in auction houses producing falls of the hammer at millions of dollars, and in the photography collections of the world, provide personal encounters with each other at the Mai Manó House. And even for those who are not interested in all that I have amassed here, or who would not like to learn, Howard Greenberg and the Musée de l’Elysée offer a worthwhile exhibition: behold, this is what a serious photography collection looks like – and we could follow its example…"

KINCSES Károly, curator of the Budapest exhibition

Open: 28 September – 5 January 2014

Venue: Hungarian House of Photography - Mai Manó House
Address: 1065 Budapest, 20 Nagymező Street
Tel.: + 36 1 473 2667