Péter Korniss is a leading figure in contemporary Hungarian photography. He advanced in his photographic career, which began in the 1960s, with a consistent demandingness and always with a commitment to the cause. He is still interested in the changes in the world and human fate.

While as a creator he has always been inspired by his ability to capture the image through photography, his artistic tools, style and approach have constantly changed as time has progressed. Korniss is constantly searching for the form of expression that best captures the phenomena of each era.

His work is a unique blend of documentary and personal narrative. All his major projects are truly long-term creative works. His most recent book [1]about the village of Szék (Sic, Romania) spans 55 years, which is almost unprecedented not only in the history of Hungarian photography, but also in the history of photography in general. The result of his work is a unique visual archive of 20th and 21st century Hungarian rural life, of the living and changing traditions.

No wonder he has gained widespread international recognition. He has exhibited his work in many countries around the world and has been invited to consult and judge at professional events, international juries and foundations. But he has also been an active member of the domestic photographic scene of the last fifty years as a lecturer, award founder and member of important curatorial boards. A good part of the middle generation and younger artists look to his work, his professionalism and his human standards as a point of reference.

The start of his career

Born into an upper-middle-class family in Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca, Romania). After the war he moved to Hungary with his family in 1949. He graduated from the Eötvös Grammar School in Budapest and began studying law at the Faculty of Law at ELTE University in 1955. A year later he was already active in the revolutionary committee of the Faculty of Law and was expelled from the university. He took on various jobs to earn a living, including one at the Photographers’ Cooperative (Fényszöv). This turned a broken career into a great opportunity, although he did not immediately find his photographic direction. He was offered a job at the leading sports weekly of the time, Képes Sport, where the best photographers worked in the photo section. He learned the trade as an extern with Tibor Komlós, Károly Hemző, József Farkas and László Almási. He formed lifelong friendships with Hemző, Farkas and Almási, but the world of sports photography did not appeal to him. Fényszöv sent him to photograph dance. And it was these photos that were Ferenc Novák, choreographer: he immediately sensed the talent and quality in Korniss' dance pictures.

The young photographer was spending his military service years at the time, but Novák did not start working with anyone else, he waited until Korniss was discharged, and from then on, they remained close friends and worked on several projects together until the death of Ferenc Novák in 2024. Novák revived contemporary folk dance culture first as leader of the Bihari Ensemble and then as leader of the Honvéd Ensemble. And Péter Korniss became not only the ensembles' photographer but practically coexisted with the community. As we will see in the rest of his career, personal relationships and human communities play a crucial role for him. Both in his private life and in his professional life. They cannot be separated. This was also the case with Ferenc Novák, the 25th Theatre, the editorial office of Nők Lapja, the Dutch Dance Theatre and the Várfok Gallery. His life partner, Edit Korniss, was a dancer at the Bihari, and most of his friends came from the profession.

The development of his photographic career can also be attributed to Ferenc Novák. When the young man, born in Transylvania, but a true city boy, unaware of the tradition and unaware of the spectacle that awaited him, entered the dance hall of Sic in November 1967, his fate was sealed.

Heaven’s Bridegroom

In the room of that house in Sic, the vivid past came before his eyes. He felt he had to capture the wonder of seeing the young people strolling in the light of the kerosene lamp. Everyone in costume, everyone moving and behaving according to centuries-old customs, following and living the tradition. And Péter Korniss, as a photographer, was by then working routinely, confidently figuring out what to photograph and how. It became obvious that he would dedicate his career as a photographer to capturing, and within that, primarily to the artistic documentation of folk traditions and ways of life.

From the very first moment, Korniss was thinking on a larger scale and over a much longer distance than was usual in photography at the time (and has been for much of the time since). He knew full well that although the weekend dance in the small village of Sic could become a sensational photo essay, he was interested in a much broader context, how and why folk traditions had been preserved. Not only in Sic and not only in places inhabited by Hungarians. In the next major phase of his creative work, he focused on why and how these traditions are changing and disappearing in the Carpathian Basin.

In the 1960s and 1970s he visited the villages of rural Hungary and Transylvania. He was looking for traditions, but also for the fullness of rural life, agricultural work, village festivals, weddings, funerals, the conditions of the existence of communities. He also published his first major exhibitions and his groundbreaking photo albums. National and international success was not long in coming. From that moment on, he became a key figure in Hungarian cultural life. In the 1970s, he was awarded a state prize and was invited to participate in the most important international professional circles of the time.

At that time, he was already a contributor to Nők Lapja, the most popular weekly photo magazine of the Kádár era [1956-1988], but he also received an increasing number of assignments as a foreign photographer. For many years he was the official photographer of the National Dance Theatre in Amsterdam. His photographer's mentality, his demand for quality, his human character and his perfect command of English made him one of the best-known Hungarian photographers in the world for decades.

Change of subject and detour

At the end of the 1970s, Korniss increasingly felt that he was unable to show more, fresher, more valid visuals of his traditional subject matter than before. Although capturing and documenting is the unifying and fundamental endeavour of his oeuvre, for Korniss each image he creates and presents to the public has an aesthetic and philosophical significance. He prepares and selects his photographs and the images that make up his series, exhibitions and books with a scrupulous care. He is never content with 'mere' capture. Photographs must go beyond the primary view, they must encapsulate the totality of the world, of the period. And, the artist himself, his relationship to the world. Of course, very unabashedly, in the background, but still measuring everything and forming an opinion about everything, there is Péter Korniss in the photographs. This is why, although it is not so obvious even to the professional public, Korniss' entire career is accompanied by a struggle with the language of form, with visual shaping.

His several months in the US have been an interesting detour. He had the opportunity to visit several Native American communities and to document some aspects of indigenous life in North America. A book was also made of the trip. [2] The volume alternates colour and black and white photographs and is not so much in the range of Korniss's earlier photo albums [3] withtheir personal tone. As the author himself writes in the afterword: "A few months could not have been enough to gain a deeper insight into the life, thinking and emotions of the Native Americans." [4]At that time, Korniss felt that the traditional method of reporting was no longer enough, and wanted to create a more in-depth, thoughtful, mature and formal series. It is instructive that the images of Native Americans have found their place in the oeuvre in the major retrospectives. [5]

Thus, in the second half of the 1970s, he turns his back on the countryside, but not on the rural people. He finds a new subject. The guest worker. An interesting symptom of the uneven development in Hungary was the mass of commuters from the poorer provinces to the capital. Growing industry and large infrastructure developments have absorbed the surplus labour from the countryside. Commuting was both an opportunity and an immense constraint. Rural men lived in Budapest, coexisting in workers' hostels and even separated from their families for weeks at a time. Korniss rode the so called 'black trains', the trains full of commuters on Monday mornings and Saturday afternoons.

And although he felt the subject was good, for a while he couldn't find the style, the visual approach. And yet, as we have written before, this is a basic principle for him. It was precisely because of his international experience and his knowledge that he tried to cultivate a more unabashed documentary style, which was in the process of being renewed. But the result was disappointing for him. For a while he gave up the work. But then he found the visual world of his photo-novel (as the book [6]was subtitled) when he found the protagonist of his story in the peasant man from Szabolcs County, András Skarbit. Once again, it was the human, personal connection that helped Kornis in his professional work. The result of decades of work is a series of photographs that is unique in Hungarian photography. The subject matter and the objective, but not in the least unemotional approach typical of the artist, created a new genre. The individual photographs and the series are metaphors for a strange social phenomenon of the end of the 20th century, but that is not all they give. Péter Korniss has created an exceptional photographic novel about the eternal András Skarbit, a working man who is always out of the limelight, born in anonymity and leaving the world anonymous. This is the reason why this work has a timeless character and why people all over the world understand when they see a Hungarian 20th century guest worker. A Vendégmunkás (The Guest Worker) is also a testimony to the greatness of photography and his seemingly inexhaustible skills.

Inventory of the past, present

Since the 1990s, Korniss' interest has turned towards the social effects of globalisation and modernisation. He was mainly concerned with how rural life was being transformed by the modern world. But towards the end of the last century, photography also began to undergo very marked changes. Korniss felt an increasingly urgent need to change his own formal language. If the world, and photography itself, were to be completely transformed, it would be impossible to produce authentic and powerful photographs in the style of ten or twenty years earlier. In Leltár (Inventory) [7], he has collected the fresh works of this new creative era and selected those of the past with a fresh eye. It is characteristic of him how important and decisive he felt this change was, since he wrote the text of this book himself – something that is not typical of Korniss. At one point he summarises, as if describing his artistic principles, what he thinks about photography: “As a documentary photographer I always wanted to be objective, but I knew that this was impossible. I wanted to stick to reality, but I knew too many different faces of it. I wanted to overcome my biases, but they were deeply rooted. I tried to approach my subjects objectively. But I never succeeded. I knew that my nature, my knowledge and my experiences determined what and how I saw and photographed. The message of the images was already decided before I pressed the shutter release button." [8]

Interestingly, the visual linguistic change of form that Korniss made in the 1990s is twofold. On the one hand, it took the artist in the direction of contemporary visual art's use of photography, of staged, orchestrated, conceptual images, but it also took him back to the 19th century past of photography. As Peter Korniss himself says in a video for the Pixel and Folklore exhibition [9] at the Hungarian Heritage House in 2024: his favourite Transylvanian model, with whom he had been friends for decades, asked him to take a 'proper' photo of his family. In other words, a photo in which they could stand in front of the camera and be captured with dignity, self-identity and in a way that befitted their social status. An old-style portrait that can be proudly handed down to posterity. And although Korniss was not sure at the time, it soon became clear that this old–new direction, towards the staged, reconstructed, orchestrated image, was the direction to take in terms of formal language.

Moreover, in the increasingly sharp, blurred, pulsating present, a photograph taken during a paused and planned moment is far more capable of compression. And to function almost as a metaphor, to have weight and meaning, as in the artist's earlier works. Thus, the series continued in some respects much as before, yet in a completely different way.

The volume on the nativity scenes [10] also includes old ‘reportage’ monochrome shots and newer, staged, even studio and colour images. Peter Korniss, incidentally, insisted on black and white photography for a long time. At the beginning of his career, quality photography could only be monochrome. And for creative photography, the monochrome visual language was crucial. Yet Korniss had already been using colour raw materials early in his career, often for commissioned photographic assignments. But there were also times when he used colour for his own subjects. However, it would have been difficult for the professional public to tolerate a girl in a bright Sic costume making hay in all her colourful glory. After his first major exhibition, many people questioned why he overdressed his characters, because they simply could not believe that what Korniss photographed in the 1960s in Sic was the living reality. For the creative photographer, the way he thinks before and during the making of his images is also crucial. In his 20th-century work, Korniss thought in black and white even when he was working with colour raw material. Thus, the old colour works lay dormant in the archives until the 21st century and were displayed in the Várfok Gallery and in the large retrospective exhibition [11]at the Hungarian National Gallery. By then, time had caught up with the artist.

Preserved and renewed for the 21st century

In the new century, Korniss' attention is once again directed towards his main theme, the evolution of traditions and rural life. His large photo album, Kötődés 1967-2008 (Attachement 1967-2008) [12]is a kind of summary and reinterpretation, in which his entire oeuvre is given a new place and a new meaning.

The next significant chapter of his artistic expression is his great collaboration with the Várfok Gallery. Founded by Károly Szalóky, the private gallery was one of the first to start operating in Hungary and their focus is more towards fine art, but they also represent Péter Korniss as a photographer. As a result, his works have been published and have been exhibited on the art market. Public and private collections have found it easier and more professional to get to know Korniss and his work through the gallery. In addition, for many years now, the gallery has been presenting segments of the artist's oeuvre or interesting selections on various themes in many venues at home and abroad.

The most important event of the new century was the retrospective exhibition of Péter Korniss at the Hungarian National Gallery [13]and, at the same time, his exhibition at the Várfok Gallery [14]. The large-scale exhibitions at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 not only presented significant chapters of his career with emblematic and newly selected photographs from the archive, but also included Korniss' latest series of Transylvanian women commuting to Hungary. With this series, he has already summed up all that he has worked out so far by renewing the visual language and by taking an authentic photographic approach to the subject. At the same time, the commuting working woman has returned as a photographic subject.

Korniss then turned with almost renewed vigour and inspiration to capturing the life and traditions of his oldest photographic subject, the village of Sic in the 2010s. His recent works, the unparalleled project summarised in the volume Szék 1967-2022 (Sic 1967-2022) [15], already bear the irrevocable effects of the pandemic, of globalisation. This is apparent not only in the individual and group portraits that have been exhibited, but also in the now more conceptual, condensed and at once very personal, yet somewhat distancing photographs of moments of everyday life.

Péter Korniss is one of the greatest figures of contemporary Hungarian photography. With deep empathy, a classic documentary approach and a renewed conceptual style, his works depict the vibrant and changing customs, lifestyles and characters of the Hungarian countryside and the multi-ethnic settlements of Transylvania. And with the man from Szabolcs and the Transylvanian commuter women, he gives us a universal portrait of the working man of the day in the form of a photographic novel and a photobook.

Notes

[1] Hosszú úton, Szék 1967-2022, (The Long Road, Sic 1967-2022) Bookart Kiadó, 2023, Miercurea-Ciuc/Budapest

[2] Vörös Felhő földjén (The Land of Red Cloud), Corvina Kiadó, Budapest, 1982

[3] Elindultam világ útján (Heaven’s Bridegroom), Corvina Kiadó, Budapest, 1975 and Múlt idő (Passing Times), Corvina Kiadó, Budapest, 1979

[4] ibid. l. note 2.

[5] Hosszú táv (Continued), Várfok Gallery, 19 October 2017–13 January 2018, curated by Kovács Krisztina

[6] A vendégmunkás (The Guest Worker), Mezőgazdasági Kiadó, Budapest, 1988

[7] Leltár, Erdélyi képek (Inventory, Transilvanian Pictures), Officina Nova/ Kreatív Médiaműhely, Budapest, 1998

[8] ibid. p 154.

[9] Pixel és folklór – Fotó és népművészet a 21. században (lit. Pixel and Folklore–Photography and Folk Art in the 21tst Century) Hungarian Heritage House Budapest, 10 October 2024–18 December 2024, curated by Klára Szarka

[10] Betlehemes (Nativity Play), Helikon, Budapest, 2006

[11] Folyamatos emlékezet (Continuous Memories), Hungarian National Gallery, 29 September 2017–07 January 2018, curated by Péter Baki, Krisztina Jerger

[12] Kötődés 1967–2008 (Attachement 1967-2008), Helikon, Budapest, 2008

[13] see note 7

[14] see note 5

[15] Szék 1967-2022 (Sic 1967-2022), Bookart Kiadó, Miercurea-Ciuc/Budapest, 2023

[2024]