Rarely Seen Photographs – A Journey through the Photographic Treasures of Hungarian Museums

Arriving from Debrecen, Szigetbecse, Pécs, Székesfehérvár, Nyírbátor, Kecskemét, Szeged and Nyíregyháza, the 200 or so items covering 130 years from 1864 have a variety of authors, some unnamed, some bearing the imprint of Hungary’s most famous photographers: László Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész, Brassaï  or Martin Munkácsi.
The photographs are arranged in little themed plots along the walls of the exhibition rooms – here boats, there artisans, further again a series on the First World War at home and at the front. Small-town and rural Hungary are well illustrated, but scenes from Morocco, Italy, Paris and the USA add to the travelling theme.
Some are quaint but nevertheless, for the duration of the exhibition, serve the purpose for which they were taken – immortalising a moment someone, somewhere, once thought important. The arrival of the first car in Szeged is depicted in a 1904 photograph by József Auer, featuring a car so flower-bedecked it cannot be imagined in motion. A serious, uniformed chauffeur sits at the wheel behind the shiny brass horn, while two children in their Sunday best look out from the back.
Others seem of more fleeting interest: rows of early-20th-century moustached officials gaze at the camera while further away a party of six enjoys a riverboat trip. The year is 1914 and the woman in a man’s three-piece suit, hands in pockets and cigar at mouth in the centre of the group looks confidently ahead under the benevolent grin of a uniformed official sporting cap and bayonet.