The pinnacle of Károly Kincses’s career as a photo-museologist can be seen as the founding of the Hungarian Museum of Photography, established jointly with colleagues around the time of the regime change, as well as his editorial stewardship of the publication series A magyar fotográfia történetéből (lit. From the History of Hungarian Photography), launched and curated by the Museum. In addition, he is the author of numerous volumes that have made a substantial contribution to the historiography of photography, and the founder of the Mai Manó House. This invites an examination of the inquisitive, research-driven mind of a man attentive to overlooked areas, who pioneered the study of Hungarian photography and who, through his exhibitions and books, introduced both the wider public and the profession to remarkable life histories, rendering his career singular.
Károly Kincses has been engaged with photography since the age of six. As colleagues attest, he has functioned as an institution in his own right within the photographic field, playing a central co-ordinating role in Hungarian photography. A solitary yet meticulous researcher, he collaborated with trusted partners on his most important projects. His journalistic publications and photographic reportages stand as testimonies of the history of Hungarian photography. In 1986, his first independent volume was published by the Methodological Institute of the National Centre for Public Education under the title A fotós művelődés- és falutörténeti gyűjtés módszertana (lit. Methodology of Cultural and Rural-Historical Collection in Photography). The preservation and transmission of accumulated knowledge and research also form the foundation of his work as an educator. He developed a comprehensive framework for Hungarian photographic history. Nothing attests more clearly to the precision of his work than the Magyar fotóenciklopédia (lit. Encyclopaedia of Hungarian Photography) he has been compiling for nearly forty-six years, which, with an estimated corpus of seventy thousand entries, constitutes the most extensive reference corpus of Hungarian photographic history. At present, his computer contains biographical data of varying depth on over 70,000 photographic artists, professional photographers, photographic traders, theorists, and amateur photographers. From 1839 onwards, the database includes all figures considered relevant to Hungarian photography. Rural, small-town, and fairground photographers are represented alongside the fashionable metropolitan portrait photographers of the decades between the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the First World War, followed by photojournalists of the later eras, in short, every photographer worthy of mention. In the course of his research, he also paid attention to photographers living in emigration. His major professional work (and academic inaugural lecture) is partly devoted to photographers who emigrated, as presented in the exhibition Akik elmentek – és akik itt maradtak (lit. Those Who Left – and Those Who Stayed), in which he assembled them according to the place and date of their emigration. He analysed the periods and circumstances that compelled these photographers to leave the country. Károly Kincses names and categorises these individuals, and describes the interrelations and tendencies discernible within photographic history. In total, the material concerns nearly seven hundred photographers who, in their new places of residence, produced significant work, achieved high professional recognition, or attained international renown.
Alongside his in-depth scholarly research, Károly Kincses took on the role of a cultural organiser and institution builder. He correctly identified that the building of the former, once highly successful and prominent photographic studio, named after the nineteenth-century Hungarian photographer Manó Mai, could serve as a uniquely significant venue in a European context for an exhibition space and institution devoted to photography. He played a key role in the establishment of the Mai Manó House. On the basis of his initiative, the Mai Manó House, which had originally functioned as a photographic studio, was converted in the 1990s and returned to photographic use. Between 1995 and 1999, he directed the renovation works together with András Bánkuti and Magdolna Kolta. From 1994 to 1999, he was the initiator and organiser of the House of Hungarian Photographers programme, which utilised the Mai Manó House for photographic purposes. The Mai Manó House opened in March 1999 on Nagymező Street in Budapest. Between 1994 and 1999, Kincses was head and curator of the Mai Manó Photo Gallery operating in the Mai Manó House; from 1999 to 2000, he was artistic director of the House of Hungarian Photographers, and he later worked as a curator, and from 2009 to 2015 as chief artistic adviser of the same institution. Robert Capa, André Kertész, Márton Munkácsi, Brassaï, and László Moholy-Nagy belong among those Hungarian photographers of twentieth-century art who played a formative role in the development of modern visual perception.
In 1991, the Hungarian Museum of Photography was established in Kecskemét as Hungary’s first museum devoted specifically to the presentation of photography and photographic art, as well as to the systematic preservation and storage of photographic works. Moreover, it was the country’s first museum maintained by a foundation (the Hungarian Photography Foundation). From December 1991, Károly Kincses was the Museum’s founding director, while also acting as secretary of its maintaining body, the Hungarian Photography Foundation. The Museum holds several hundred thousand photographic positives and negatives, and its collection is complemented by documents, cameras, photographic equipment, and laboratory instruments. He remained director of the institution until the end of 2005, sharing its leadership with Magdolna Kolta, during which time the institution developed into an internationally recognised centre of professional activity. Following the completion of his work in Kecskemét, between 2007 and 2009, he served as an adviser to the Kieselbach Gallery and worked with other galleries on improving the state of the photographic art market. From 2006 to 2013, he built a photographic archive for the National Trust of Monuments for Hungary, drawing on images documenting state-owned historic monuments. From 2013 until May 2015, he worked as an artistic associate of the then newly established Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre, after which he assumed the role of head of the photographic archive at the Eszterháza Cultural Research and Festival Centre.
In May 2018, Károly Kincses was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. In his inaugural lecture, he presented his research project Hungarian Out. Magyar fotográfusok külföldön 1849-től máig (lit. Hungarian Out. Hungarian Photographers Abroad From 1849 to the Present), which examines the lives and professional trajectories of more than six hundred well known, little known, or entirely unknown photographers who have lived and worked, or still live and work, outside Hungary.
According to Károly Kincses, the most precise definition of photography is as follows: “A photograph is a time-preserve: a representation of a specific intersection within the structure of space and time. It follows that every present and forthcoming moment of reality is a potential photograph in which, amid continuous motion, the fixed present is instantaneously transformed into the past, while the various layers of its meaning-bearing surfaces are extraordinarily complex. However, the image, the photograph, is not a carrier of information in itself, it is a repository at most. It is capable of activating only those forms of knowledge that already exist within the viewer in some form. The more knowledge a person brings to the act of looking at an image, the more they are able to read from it. For those who lack such knowledge, the preserved image remains sealed and inaccessible.”
[2019]