Vizafogó 1968

May 12 – June 5, 2015

The Vizafogó 1968 series shot by Endre Kovács consists of special “found pictures”: in fact they belong to a series called ‘Amnesia temporis – Temporal amnesia’, but lives an independent life in it. These photos found in the artist’s private archive and shot before his emigration in the late sixties were exhibited several times, and involve only one single photo of the 52 pieces that were made in a manufacturing district in Budapest about a Roma family who lived in shacks.

The exhibition aims to show the artist’s unique approach not characteristic of the epoch and draws aparallel with the Urban Gypsies (László Moholy-Nagy, 1932), reflecting on the representation ofnomadism and its relation to artistic identity. Belonging to the sociophotos of the epoch but invisible for the contemporaries marks out from the visual environment of the period. Endre Kovács with his artist friends, Péter Breznyik and László Kovács made an excursion to Vizafogó in order to record the life of the families living among poor and unusual circumstances inthe shadow of factories. The undeveloped negatives are the prints of a world in whose poverty representations are difficult to interpret today. Despite the obviously difficult living conditions the objects look into the camera and behave cheerfully and easily, but their gestures of course do not recall the „hurrah-optimism” of the epoch. Many of them would fit into the rich private photo collection of the Újpest Gipsy Community House. Let us imagine, we watch the missing pieces of the archive of the local Roma families belonging to different social groups, since the ones in the photos could hardly afford being shot. The exhibited photos are framed with a personal story that is ought to represent the critical and emotional aspects of the contradictional researcher–curator position.

Exhibiting artist: Endre Kovács

Curator: Andrea Pócsik

Consultant: Gabriella Uhl

Venue: 2B Gallery (1092 Budapest, Ráday u. 47.)