"... I think there is no end to the quest. For an artist, the surest right path is the search for a path. I hope that for me today, this search is not over. " [1]
The poetic principles mentioned of the interview is that of a mature artist, but in fact it is the attitude that characterises his entire creative career. It was for this very reason that the very young László Haris felt bitterly disappointed at the legendary professional venue of the time, the MADOME photo club on the Belgrade quay in Budapest, when he visited the lectures and club days with a friend. What Haris heard there about photographic technique he already knew [2]: what he didn't know, he wasn't interested in in terms of his creative work. He found no opportunity to explore, to experiment, no intellectual excitement. And the old-fashioned taste that still characterised this workshop at the end of the 1950s was a particular repulsion.
Although the camera, still and motion picture, has always been the dominant tool in László Haris's artistic work, and after a while he came to be seen as a ‘photographer’ by those who thought more boldly about photography, in the first phase of his career he was specifically a visual artist. By creating and thinking together with them and joining their various creative groups, he found the right artistic medium for himself.
His first important pictures were taken earlier, on 2 November 1956, at the age of 13, in the seemingly calm streets of Józsefváros [District VIII in Budapest]. He tried to walk around the important places near his home and took dozens of shots. The political climate soon became threatening, and he decided to destroy these documents. He himself believed that he had burned all his pictures and films. Yet, miraculously, decades later, he found two of them, and when the news got out, 15 more of his photos turned up, courtesy of an old friend.
The story of certain ouevres is a fairy-tale history of a Hungary torn by wars, revolutions, uprisings and profound political upheavals. In Haris' case it is particularly so. The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a boom in the Hungarian art scene, and for Haris, a university student, the new Italian film, Fellini's La Dolce Vita, the Polish Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds and Kurosawa's classic Rashomon were a real inspiration. It was also at this time that he encountered visual artists such as Attila Csáji, Sándor Csutoros, István Demeter, Dezső Korniss and József Molnár V. Exciting exhibitions, film pieces that created new imagery and narratives were among the offerings that interested them. He found all this so important that he even left (technical) university for two years. In the meantime, he became acquainted with the work of two representatives of the neo-avant-garde photographic movement in Hungary: György Lőrinczy and Csaba Koncz. And this acquaintance was decisive for his choice of his own work. Although he had friends who were visual artist, he remained committed to photography. But he was interested in the new, the avant-garde.
He made his first major series of microscopic images of metal castings showing special hidden worlds during these years. He was on his way to the depths and heights of understanding the world. As Ernő P. Szabó writes about him [3], his truly abstract photographs are akin not only to the works of Lőrinczy and Koncz, but also to the artistic representations of the organic world, from action painting to Tashisme and photograms.
In the narrow but active circle in which the Hungarian neo-avant-garde artists circulated in the 1960s, Haris found more intellectual partners. He was particularly interested in the work of Attila Csáji. The painter, who at the time worked with strong, rough brushstrokes, was captivated by the surface structure of his canvases as a photographer. He explored the secrets of the metal castings with microphotographs, while the details of Csáji's canvases were enlarged to a huge scale. He revealed hidden details in surfaces of a few square centimetres that, almost coming to life on their own, gave a glimpse into the depths of the creative process that were invisible to the naked eye. The series was completed with some works by Molnár V., then by István Demeter and Dezső Korniss. The often several-hundred-fold magnification required serious photographic preparation. Haris synthesised a very practical knowledge of the craft and a philosophical approach based on Eastern philosophy in the most natural way possible in his work. Not only in this series, but throughout his career.
Since the late 1960s, he actively participated in the actions and exhibitions of artists who were pioneering new paths and were considered oppositional. Although what he did was photographic art, it was not considered as such by the official photographic public. But he found his place in the Szürenon group [Szürenon is a Hungarian artists’ collective, its name originating from Attila Csáji’s expression ‘sur et non.’ The word is a combination of surrealism and nonfigurativism.] and the chapel exhibitions in Balatonboglar. He also took an active part in the organisation. These events attracted an increasing number of people from different artistic disciplines. Centrally directed official attacks on the 'illegal' artists, began soon. It was then that Haris made his now iconic photograph, Törvénytelen avantgárd (Illegal Avant-Garde), which became a symbolic image of the era. The Kettős portré (Double Portrait), exhibited in 1973, is similarly symbolic. A photograph depicting the fingerprints of Sándor Csutoros and his wife, who was convicted in a show trial based on fabricated charges, vividly modelled the political milieu of the Kádár regime [1956-1988], which was once again in a state of flux in the early 1970s.
The art action of 21 December 1972, the Jel (Sign) with Csutoros and József Molnár V., also opened a new era in Haris' career. His protest against mandatory jury approval also meant an open withdrawal from the official art scene. At the same time, the interplay between his work as a photographer, painter and sculptor is fascinating. The first performance was not without a sequel. Haris's basic artistic stance seemed to shift towards concept art. Another joint action in 1973 was followed in September by another important movement, after the violent demolition of the chapel in Boglár. The result was the work Felülről szemlélem az emberszabású ketrecet (lit. I Observe the Anthropomorphic Cage from Above). Then, at the end of the year, he exhibited another concept at the University of Technology, four picture sequences entitled Ember (Man). The next experiment took place in 1975 at the Matthias Hill quarry, where the symbolism of the earlier [4] Sign was revealed, and a full day was spent making the many pictorial sequences of the 'sign' placed in the natural environment.
The photographic sequence continued to preoccupy Haris, and this time he created perhaps his most interesting set of images without his fellow artists. The date of its creation is 5 June 1975. He exposed [the camera] every three minutes from the same spot for twenty-four hours. He took 480 pictures from a single spot in Mázsa Square. He then made two tables of the images, one sharp and one blurred. He condensed insight, representation and the need to capture change into this unique work, inspired by Andy Warhol. In the late 1970s he recorded two more avant-garde actions, the ironic Vernissage and the ‘sci-fi’ shot Föld (Earth) for the fictitious Hungarian Avant-Garde Museum [5].
In the 1980s, his creative path took a different turn, and his earlier years at Nagyító Magazine may have played a part in this. The creative covers he designed for the magazine and his work as a photographer were also productive influences. Thus, when he joined Pannónia Film Studio, his exceptional photographic skills and his receptiveness to a wide range of visual expressions helped him to explore animation and cinematography on his own.
His photo-animation process was not only evident in the headlines, but also in the artistic short film Apokrif (Apocryphal), which he made together with István Orosz. But it was not only the moving image that attracted him, but also poster art. From the end of the 1980s and during the regime change [the Hungarian transition from state socialism to parliamentary democracy in 1989–90], he participated in the production of many memorable posters as a photographer member of the creative team. [6] At the same time, he was a faithful documenter with his camera at the political events that were revived during the regime change. He presented his footage of these events under the title “…és mégis mozog a nép” ("...And Yet the People Move"). Although he himself does not consider his documentary work to be the mainstay of his creative career, the valuable footage [7] he has accumulated cannot be ignored.
In the '90s, Haris returns or rather continues his work with abstract image-making. He himself calls this period the Új Kaland (New Adventure). Again, he shows vastly enlarged details of fragments of works: those of István Demeter. But the magnification also increases over time, and as we have seen before with Haris's fascination with sequences, these newer works are arranged in sequences. Two strings of images emerge, E and K series, and the exhibition of these was labelled, with what might be called engineering precision, E-től K-ig (E to K). In the New Adventure and in his next experiment, the circular panoramas, the same need for completeness, the unity of analysis and synthesis, is evident.
Haris is constantly dismantling the whole, almost breaking it down into its elements, but in this "elementary world" he synthesizes a new wholeness. His panoramas, which he has been making since 2008, seek to capture the totality of space and time. And perhaps to ‘nail down’ movement, the ever-shifting image and the life that moves with it, into one big summing-up photograph. It seems no accident that his imagery is coloured, since it is colour that gives the fullness of the world we see.
And it is no coincidence that he himself appears in his works, since as an analytical observer he must be outside the world he is examining, but as a creator who feels everything, he is very much a participant in the common human universe.
[2015]
Notes
[1] excerpt from Sándor Bacskai: A képzőművészetben otthon éreztem magam (I Am at Home in Fine Art) in.: Fotóművészet, 2002/3-4.
[2] He was only six years old, when he learned how to take photos from his brother, and was soon exposing, developing and contacting with a steady hand.
[3] Ernő P. Szabó: Haris László (László Haris), Hungart, Budapest, 2013
[4] The title of the first action in 1972 was also Sign, referring to the geometric sign made by József Molnár V.
[5] András Bán came up with the idea of the MA museum, which motivates art and action, but does not really exist, but is still an existing museum with its documentation.
[6] He also worked with Péter Pócs, Kristóf Ducki, István Orosz, János Romvári and Mária Horváth.
[7] Among other things, we can mention his material on the Csángós, the Csíksomlyó pilgrimage (Șumuleu, Romania), the weeks after the Romanian Revolution [1989] or the buildings of Károly Kós [architect, 1883-1977].