Whether they admit it or not, people generally prefer those who are one-dimensional and easy to pigeonhole – including artists. In the life of the photographer in question, nothing turned out the way it was supposed to. As an amateur from Baja, he aspired to national recognition, and indeed made it to Budapest – widely regarded at the time as ‘America’ by young photographers with ambitions. Trained as a specialist photographer in water management, he wanted to become a photojournalist. He succeeded. As a photojournalist, he constantly engages in artistic practice – and even that is not enough: later, he retrained himself in digital image-making. It takes a real feat to find one’s way around him. He is the classic type of photojournalist who always thinks in terms of projects, series and photo essays, and yet, increasingly, he has been forging an independent path through analogue photographic processes, mechanical montage techniques, and photographs transformed through their computer-based equivalents, in which a number of motifs, formal and thematic elements reappear time and again.
Horváth is a tipically metropolitan photographer. His attention is focused on conditions of permanent or temporary homelessness and rootlessness; more specifically, on housing estates, the more frayed districts of the capital, their inhabitants, and the Cuban guest workers who came to live there – themes that have remained central to his work. And, of course, above all, himself. There is no other artist in contemporary Hungarian photography – perhaps with the sole exception of András Baranyay – who appears so frequently in his own images. The question, of course, is whether this is truly himself, or merely a very similar-looking mask behind which one can easily hide – for an entire lifetime. For who would claim that they know, that they have fully comprehend, Péter Horváth? Smiling, quiet, polite, and at the same time rather obstinate and resolute – all of this coloured by a constantly present ironic undertone. I have always liked his style, and yet, despite knowing something about almost every moment of his life, I do not truly know him at all. If there is anyone whose career still holds many surprises, it is probably him. It is said of him that his strength lies not in sensation-seeking, but in the authentic capture of subtle moods and nuanced details. It is also said that he photographs the undignified situations of people forced into uncertainty and impermanence. And that he photographs quietly – which, of course, does not mean that he owns some special silent Nikon, but rather that he photographs as he lives: without much fuss, without ranting, juicy anecdotes or adventurous escapades. If this is what is said of him, it is undoubtedly true. And much else besides. Camera movement, double exposures, infrared-sensitive materials, cameras converted for such use, and the maximal exploitation of flash possibilities characterise those images in which he is not content merely with the effect of the moment he has observed. Among Hungarian photographic artists, he was one of the first to take the computer on as a full creative partner, thereby making easier – and at the same time more explicit – the activity through which he shapes a new, constructed ‘HP’ world out of reality.
A boy raised in the southern countryside, who believed the press to be paradise. Without formal training, he found himself in a darkroom, where eight years of solitude awaited him – but he learned to photograph. Amateur successes, an internship at MTI (The National News Agency) – yet he was determined to make his way into print press. Magyar Ifjúság, Népszava, Képes 7 – it was Tamás Féner who invited him there as deputy section editor, and he soon learned that he was unsuited to all kinds of managerial tasks. The first anniversary cover was produced jointly by ‘HP’ and Gábor Kerekes. He returned to Népszava, and from then on, he can recall only from his notebook which Hungarian press outlets he did not pass through for shorter or longer periods. Alongside his entire (and extensive) journalistic career, he worked in parallel on his artistic material, participated in exhibitions, published books, received awards… He referred to all of this simply as “my own business”. Even when considering all his exhibitions and albums, he has very few images that were produced during official editorial assignments.
As a pensioner, he photographs far more than before. Throughout his life, he has experimented – with analogue and digital alike – manipulating the image produced by photography because he was troubled by the fact that the reality he photographed refused to be as he had imagined it.
From the very beginning, he made use of graphic photographic processes, tonal reduction, solarisation, montage techniques, darkroom and shooting tricks, and manipulations in the same way that he now does in his computer-altered, re-created photographs. He does not wish merely to document concrete, individual situations; through these interventions and alterations, he elevates – or attempts to elevate – into the general all that his highly sensitive ‘antennae’ alert him to. His work has become colourful; he no longer juggles at the enlarger but in front of his monitors, yet his intention to overlay several elements and layers of a reality he finds too simplistic, thereby creating a less specific but far more universal visual situation in space and time, has remained unchanged. And then – perhaps merely to confound expectations – in his newly emerging works he has returned to black and white, employs fewer tricks, and photographs people and families with even greater empathy, within – and occasionally outside – the walls of their homes.
There has been no major change. He made photographs once, and he does so now – photographs in which certain motifs, formal and thematic elements reappear again and again. This is what H.P. [referring to Péter Horváth] says about himself with due seriousness: “My favourite motifs are roads that lead nowhere, objects that are no longer usable for anything, windows that do not open onto anything. I am a realist.”
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He began photographing in the early 1960s. “At the beginning of my career, working as a photographer in water management, I felt that I was being forced to do purely functional tasks; it was only when I found myself immersed in press photography that I grasped the legitimacy of documentary practice. Yet throughout my life I have been troubled by the fact that reality simply presents itself as it is, and it was this discomfort that led me to begin making glued photo montages.” (Attila Ditzendy: A digitális évezred küszöbén [On the Threshold of the Digital Millennium]. Napi Magyarország, 9 June 1999.) Thus, even in his earliest photographs, he intervened in his images: he distorted them, reduced tonal ranges, set his models in motion, exposed multiple times onto a single negative, enlarged several negatives onto one sheet of paper… As early as 1981 – long before computer image-making existed – András Fáber wrote of him: “In his photographs, lyrical and grotesque elements are combined with great suggestive force, and he is an accomplished master of metaphorical image construction. He dismantles and then – using the specific tools of photographic technique, blur, movement and montage – reassembles the everyday reality perceived by all of us (a street fragment, an interior, a human figure, a face, utilitarian objects), and through the bold interrelation of motifs discovers the conceivable behind the perceptible, the questionable behind the obvious, the intangible behind the tangible, and the extraordinary behind the banal. When he deems it necessary, he also draws confidently from the toolkit of painting; in his images, baroque deceptive naturalism and surrealist associative imagery coexist comfortably.” (András Fáber: Horváth Péter fotói [lit. Photographs by Péter Horváth]. Új Tükör, 24 May 1981, No. 21, p. 4.) In light of this, it is hardly surprising that he speaks of his computer-based art – the organic continuation of this line of work – as follows: “I place various elements of reality alongside one another within a single image. For this, I enlisted the computer. The computer inspires me and makes it possible to repeat any number of steps during the working process…” (ibid. Ditzendy). “His early works are disturbingly simple. One senses that he is searching for something beneath the surface of the visible…” (Mihály Gera: 7. kiállítás [lit. The 7th Exhibition]. Exhibition catalogue, Ernst Múzeum, Budapest, 1986.) “My favourite motifs are roads that lead nowhere, objects that are no longer usable for anything, windows that do not open onto anything. I am a realist.” (Imre D. Magyari: Ál/arcokká vált montázsok [lit. Montages Transformed into Illusions and Faces]. Népszava, 7 June 1999.) “The moment is given. The image is fixed on film. Then he arrives. He is a photographer, yet his images are more than simple photographs. Often, he is not content with the effect produced by the moment he has observed. For several years now, his images have acquired a new appearance with the aid of the computer, while retaining the original content and meaning characteristic of Péter Horváth” (Kiskegyed, 24 November 2000.)
Horváth has been photographing since his secondary school years. In 1963, glued photo montages characterised his work – experiments and self-portraits. His technical possibilities were limited, and according to contemporary criticism the images were not photographic in nature. Meanwhile (until 1972) he worked in an industrial manner at the Baja Water Management Directorate, where he acquired the technical foundations of photography. At the same time, he made his debut as a photojournalist: he was a contributor to Bajai Hírlap and the Baja correspondent of MTI Fotó (Photo Department of the National News Agency).
From 1964 he was a member of the Duna Fotóklub [Duna Photo Club] in Baja – later also a member of its leadership – and it was at the club’s 1964 jubilee exhibition that he first appeared in public with his images. His first national success came with the 1965 quality award of the Association of Hungarian Photographic Artists. From that year onward – alongside his commitments in Baja – he worked as a photo correspondent for Petőfi Népe, published in Kecskemét.
By the late 1960s, the glued montage technique was replaced by a style operating with chemical image-modifying processes and marked by sociographic sensitivity. It was at this time that he first used hard, toneless printing-industry films, isohelia, solarisation and sandwich negatives. In Baja, without any formal preparatory training, he learned the profession autodidactically, on the job. He photographed his immediate surroundings, while continuously carrying out technical experiments in the darkroom. During this period, he primarily photographed young people, his contemporaries, in an almost intervention-free, documentary manner (for example Kégli, Motoroslány, Miért, Beat-nemzedék). “His early works appear disturbingly simple. One senses that their creator is searching for something beneath the surface of the visible. At first, he strives to formulate in a puritanical, almost tool-less manner. His images contain hardly anything superfluous or dispensable; instead, they present and highlight only the essential part of the spectacle. Later, however, formal innovations appear in his photographs; he tried and utilised almost every tool offered by contemporary technology.” (ibid. Gera: 7. kiállítás.)
Until 1978, he worked as a photographer for the Hungarian News Agency (Magyar Távirati Iroda). Owing to the technical and networking opportunities available there, he illustrated a reportage book (György Moldova: Akit a mozdony füstje megcsapott [lit. Struck by the Smoke of the Locomotive]. Ed. György Kardos. Magvető, Budapest, 1984). With his book project about the Újpalota housing estate, he won a shared first prize in the book competition of the Association of Hungarian Photographic Artists (together with Péter Korniss’s book Erdély). He was living as a tenant in Újpalota, was in his final year at the MÚOSZ (Hungarian Journalists’ Association) school, and the housing estate material served as his diploma project. Erzsébet Zinner, secretary general of the association and a member of the jury, told him: “Your book is beautiful – but surely you don’t seriously think this can be published?” “I still keep the dummy, and I went back to photograph again,” he said.
The images of his exhibition Női munkásszálló (Women’s Workers’ Hostel), presented at the Fészek Klub, follow the traditions of social photography. Pure documentarism, without interventions. In his words: “The entire exhibition is a montage consisting of thirty-two images.” He produced social photographs on 1 May (1980). He photographed women’s workers’ hostels. “I was at MTI, on leave, with a borrowed 35mm camera. Exhibition at the Fészek. Afterwards Tükör published it as a photo report. Result: the caretaker was dismissed.”
In 1976, he became a member of the Studio of Young Photographic Artists, and from July 1979 to February 1980 he served as its secretary (after his resignation, he was succeeded by Péter Tímár). Between 1978 and 1985, he worked as a photojournalist – later picture editor – for one of the best weekly magazines of the period, Magyar Ifjúság.
Between 1980 and 1981, at exhibitions in Kiskunfélegyháza and at the Duna Gallery in Budapest, alongside reportage and social photography, images made using multiple exposure techniques appeared. The choice of subject and the underlying attitude did not change; rather, meaning deepened through the use of reality layers photographed repeatedly over one another, shifted in time. “…in his photographs, lyrical and grotesque elements are combined with great suggestive force; he is an accomplished master of metaphorical image construction. He dismantles and then reassembles everyday reality perceived by all of us, using photographic tools such as blur, movement and montage – street fragments, interiors, human figures, faces, utilitarian objects – and through the bold interrelation of motifs discovers the conceivable behind the perceptible, the questionable behind the obvious, the intangible behind the tangible, and the extraordinary behind the banal. When necessary, he confidently draws from the toolkit of painting as well; in his images, baroque and surrealism coexist…” (ibid. Fáber).
In 1982, he participated in the social photography camp in Nagybaracska (Social photographer József Gyulavári considers him as his mentor). In Nagybaracska, he continued experimenting with a new genre: documentary social photographs made with double exposure. “The place where these images were made was called the Transitional Shelter. Here, those who had little hope of ever having a roof of their own were given a tiny, temporary home. A few keepsakes and some books could fit inside, but everything was so painfully provisional that I felt the traditional technique was too narrow for it. Although I know well that the entire oeuvre of Bresson or Kertész proves that a single marvellous moment can exist that contains past, present and future, my solution was to layer several time planes onto a single negative. I explained this to my models as well, and it was a wonderful feeling that they understood exactly what the images were about and were cooperative. Quite a few of them even came to the exhibition at the Ernst Museum.” (Péter Horváth: inaugural lecture at the Hungarian Academy of Arts, 2016, p. 4.) “With a touch of malice, he quotes one of his critics to characterise himself, according to whom he is the oldest young photographer. By his own admission, he does not wish to delight viewers with his images, and he no longer believes that photography can tell the truth, yet he strives for his works to do so nonetheless.” (II. Nagybaracska 1982. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 21–24.)
From 1986 onward, Horváth worked for three full years at the weekly magazine Képes 7. It was here that his first cover photograph appeared. Subsequently, two-page photo reports and creatively conceived covers by him were published in Képes 7, often produced in collaboration with one of the most outstanding photographers of the period, Gábor Kerekes.
Regarding his exhibition 7. kiállítás – Fényképek a nyolcvanas évekből (The 7th Exhibition – Photographs from the 1980s; Cuban Guest Workers, Housing Estate), the following was written: “A strong interest in social photography and in social processes and contradictions analysable through the camera has characterised Péter Horváth almost since the beginning of his career… Alternating between coolly objective sociography and subjective lyricism – even sonnets – and studies on photography itself, his fields of interest cannot be separated. Social photography, lyrical modes of expression, and the rational analysis of photographic possibilities usually appear together. This is what makes Péter Horváth’s images distinctive and easily recognisable […] The depiction of the bleak housing-estate environment – as a space unsuitable for real life, distorting personality and social relations, and thus essentially unreal – plays a major role in Horváth’s work…” (Ernő P. Szabó: 7. kiállítás. Fotóművészet, 1986, No. 2.) The exhibition was opened by Lajos Sváby, who stated: “Péter Horváth photographs the undignified situations of people forced into uncertainty and impermanence. His images are never loud – using a mixed metaphor, I can only say that he photographs quietly. He photographs with compassion, yet in such a way that he himself is not outside it.” (In 7. kiállítás. Exhibition catalogue. Eger, 1987.) “Our photographer, inclined to contemplation and prone to much inner struggle, rarely gives us the opportunity to glimpse into his creative world […] His early works are disturbingly simple […] He can approach the truth only when he brings the deeper layers of reality to the surface through the versatile application of the tools and possibilities offered by photography […] He builds from recognisable elements of reality, but always displaces them slightly – as he himself says, I take apart what I see and put it back together again […] Good examples of this are those photographs in which people appear as fleeting, blurred figures identifiable only in fragments, thus allowing him to express an opinion not merely about the individual but about the general as well.” (ibid. 7. kiállítás. Mihály Gera: Preface.)
“By profession, Péter Horváth is a photojournalist – and among the more distinguished ones at that. His reportage photographs are characterised by a distinctive worldview and an unusual visual language. This is an indisputable fact. Yet I suspect that his profession caused him the greatest difficulty. It must have taken a long time for him to adapt this generally attention-grabbing activity to his withdrawn, easily wounded personality. I have always found it hard to imagine him rushing about, jostling like a genuine event-hunter, appearing here and there while the camera chatters in his hands like a machine gun. I hold a different image of him. I imagine that when he sees something, he stops before photographing it, reflects, then examines everything thoroughly, because he is not interested in the event itself but in what lies behind it; he is far more interested in the cause than in the effect. For this very reason, from the very beginning of our nearly twenty-five-year acquaintance, I have always regarded Péter Horváth as a contemplative photographer.” (ibid. Gera: 7. kiállítás.)
The computer-based montage technique he began to employ in the 1990s represents a direct continuation of his previous path. “Digital technology was practically invented for me. What I imagined together, I was able to bring together within a single image. I bought my first digital camera from the prize money I won at the Westel photography competition. This was when the Manóbeli exhibition and the MÁS-KÉP album were created, which, to my knowledge, was the first of its kind in Hungary.” (Péter Horváth, oral communication, May 2016.) “By profession I am a press photographer; that is what I always wanted to be. I was interested in human destinies, particularly those struggling on the periphery of society. In agency work, the key questions are who, what, when, where? I was increasingly troubled by the fact that I could not answer the question that mattered most to me: why? I believe that a single moment extracted from events often conceals reality rather than revealing it. This is why I began making photo montages, later layering time planes through multiple exposure. The computer helps me to dismantle the spectacle and reassemble it, but I do not regard the computer as an image-making tool in itself. I try to make use of the latest processes, such as infrared photography, but I avoid technical virtuosity. I feel an image works when the realistic atmosphere of the original black-and-white photograph remains, yet the viewer is prompted to ask: is what I see really true? My tools have changed greatly over the years, but even now I want nothing more than I did as a novice photojournalist: to show the reality behind appearances – even if this is almost hopeless. Alongside classical photojournalistic and picture-editing work, I have worked as a guest lecturer at the Photography Department of Kaposvár University. In recent years, I have mainly produced portrait, fashion, still-life and illustrative work, using my own studio equipment.” (www.studio-h.hu)
“For more than three decades now, his career has been shaped simultaneously by the press, photography as an art form, and an interest in technical innovations […] With his computer-assisted photographs, the photographer repeatedly returns to the sites of his earlier work – both literally and metaphorically. In many cases, the starting point of an image is a motif he photographed ten to fifteen years earlier, or even the earlier image itself […] Péter Horváth’s works belong among those creations that profoundly transform the photographic point of departure. ‘My very existence is intervention; I intervene in every possible way, yet I nurture the illusion that this brings me closer to the truth.’ The only difference between earlier and present-day images is that while the former were produced in the traditional darkroom as the result of interactions between chemicals and materials, computer-based photographs are shaped according to the laws of the programme […] The distinctive montage technique that characterised Horváth’s earlier oeuvre can be applied on the computer virtually without limitation.” (Ernő P. Szabó: Töredékek a századvégről [lit. Fragments from the Turn of the Century]. Horváth Péter számítógépes montázsai [lit. Péter Horváth’s Computer-Based Montages]. Fotográfia, 1997, No. 8, pp. 12–17.)
In 1999, Horváth became a member of the Photojournalists’ Section of MÚOSZ (Hungarian Journalists’ Association), with numerous publications behind him. If I were to summarise his career roughly in chronological order, I would begin with Bajai Hírlap and Petőfi Népe, followed by MTI – which at the time supplied the entire press with images – then Magyar Ifjúság and Népszava. This was followed by Képes 7, Anna Magazin, Európa, Mai Nap, Reform and Kiskegyed. “For almost my entire life I worked in black and white. At MTI I was once forced to use colour material occasionally, but I did not like it. Since the first of January I have been working at Reform; here we photograph everything in colour […] For some time now I have been following the activities of mural painters and graffiti artists. I have already reached the point where they notify me in advance when they are preparing something […] The other group consists of body painters, who are dissatisfied with the grey world surrounding us and colour it in their own way…” (SZ. K. J.: Min dolgozik Horváth Péter fotográfus? [lit. What Is Photographer Péter Horváth Working On?]. Fotó, January 1995.)
Since 2016, Horváth has been a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. His current projects include Alkonyzóna (Twilight Zone) – a multilayered title: “It refers to the technique I use and also to the oppressive nature of the world around us. The absurdity of the environment can only be endured with irony. I try to laugh at what causes me anxiety” – and Az otthon melege (The Warmth of Home). He wrote the following to me about the latter: “New forms of cohabitation are emerging; the relationship between the individual and small social groups has fundamentally changed. Virtual spaces have replaced real communities, restructuring – and in many cases dismantling – existing social networks. The internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the rest seemingly create passage across cultural and political boundaries, but this is largely an illusion; these are not genuine, living bonds. Loneliness, isolation and alienation have once again become significant social problems; I would venture that they are more severe today than in the second half of the last century. This work constitutes a kind of documentation of this mood. The technology is digital, but I have sought to strip away all superfluous elements. The images feature my friends – the one who found a home in a basement, my former teachers, the model who wants to become a painter, the well-known artist who turned his home into a fortress, and the computer technician who feels at home in his workshop.”
[2016]