The photographic process was born out of the need to record. The desire to capture moments that are elusive to the human mind. The need not to lose sight of an experience, a secret, a lesson, an example that is lost with the passing of time. To avoid being condemned to a partial and incomplete memory.
The person who records is driven by curiosity. They are aware that the exact “copying” of fragile life on light-sensitive material will provide knowledge for the future. In addition to curiosity, patient attention is required to become a true recorder.
Returning from Belgium as a child, Edit Molnár spent happy and free hours in the garden of her parents' house. “For me, the story of photographer Edit Molnár begins in the tree. On the tall tree where she loved to spend time in the garden of their house in Rákospalota. The lush foliage blessedly obscured the tiny girl who, from the perfect position of observer, feasted her eyes on sweetly sad, sadly amusing, vividly teeming scenes of reality. She didn't know it yet, but she was already a photographer. The kind of person who takes pleasure in the mere act of looking, and who, although he looks at the same things the rest of us mere mortals see, always sees much more than we do, and somehow sees them differently. She had committed herself to photography before she even had a camera in her hands.” - I said this about her in 2014 at the opening of his Vigadó exhibition, and I still think this somewhat profane statement is valid today.
And yet fate drew some rather strange twists in her life. Her parents and her ancestors have been tossed back and forth by history, so it is only fitting that Edit Molnár, one of the most dedicated chroniclers of Hungarian culture, was born in Belgium. As a born observer, she probably learned more and more thoroughly from the fate of others than children in general. She experienced the fate of her parents and grandparents struggling in difficult times, but she also saw that those with perseverance, self-respect, and a good dose of courage can defy circumstances. Don't let yourself be pushed around! - she heard her father say more than once, and she took the advice. She learned to fight for what she felt was important. She was able to study with depth and discipline, and to work when it made sense to her, but she broke through stupid and unnecessary barriers when she could. If not, she bypassed them.
In secondary school, she learned what she was interested in, and nothing else. She didn't want to go to university; perhaps she wanted to be an actress, or if not, a reporter who photographed actors. On her way out of school, she called the reporting department of the Hungarian National Film Production Company from a phone box to apply for a job as a photojournalist. The next day, at the age of 16, she showed up at the company with a schoolbag and a lush plait. She confidently announced that she was skipping school and wanted to be a reporter. It was only a month later, when she arrived home, that she dared to admit she was no longer attending school, because until then she had been wearing a smock and carrying a bag to work.
It was not easy for her: inexperienced, naive, and very young. But she overcame the difficulties and fortunately found support among her older colleagues.
It is the early fifties. The former major independent photo agencies were merged under the name of the Magyar Fotó Állami Vállalat (Hungarian Photo State Company), and the best of the nationalised independent photographers were brought together here. Forced nationalisation and centralisation meant that the cream of the profession worked together for Magyar Fotó (Hungarian Photo). Zoltán Seidner, Ernő Vadas, Marian Reismann, and József Németh, alongside Miklós Rév, Károly Gink, Éva Keleti and Pál Bence, started their careers here alongside the older generation. This is the professional, intellectual, and human environment in which Edit Molnár found herself. In spite of the chilling atmosphere of the era, Magyar Fotó (Hungarian Photo) became a school of high standards, humanity, and the highest level of professional knowledge. She could learn everything from highly respected older masters, who possessed both professional humility and ambition. And Edit had both.
As she herself said in an interview: “Working with these people proved to be an incredibly serious masterclass. Imagine hearing about tones, compositions, and the tricks of enlargement on a daily basis, being raised in that atmosphere. High standards were essential; the quantitative approach was not a defining factor.” 1
In the early years, she was given the most varied tasks. She was asked to shoot agricultural reportage, industrial work, and art and sport themes alike. Edit Molnár held her own magnificently in the rush of the photo agency workdays. Physically and technically, she was able to cope with the wear and tear. So much so that she also came to excel in sports photography, one of the most difficult areas of photojournalism. Even so, it came as something of a surprise that in 1954, she landed a job with the leading sports weekly of the era, Képes Sport (Illustrated Sport). Photojournalism in general, but sports photography especially, was considered a distinctly male profession at the time. Her husband was a renowned sportsman, but this did not exempt her from hard work; she returned to MTI-Fotó (MTI Photo) in 1957 simply because making a name for herself in sports photography was infeasible.
In 1956, MTI and Magyar Fotó (Hungarian Photo) were merged. The designation MTI-Fotó (MTI Photo) became a trademark. It gave the reporters who worked there a licence like no other, but the recognition was also due to the almost a decade and a half worth of dedicated labor. MTI employees generally had better equipment than those working for the newspapers, and from the late 1950s, they were allowed to travel abroad, with access to almost everywhere conceivable under the Kádár regime. Edit Molnár was lucky: her boss at the time saw that instead of a “roving reporter”, she was cut out for a completely different style of work and, above all, different subjects.
The famous Tavaszi tárlat (Spring Exhibition) in 1956 was a defining moment in her life and career. The young reporter marvelled at modern Hungarian art. She was not actually trained in aesthetics, but she had an unerring sense of quality, as she always would later in life. Her acquaintance and friendship with Béla Kondor essentially propelled her forward in her career. She also made her first real exhibition photograph of Kondor. In the early 1960s, she increasingly focused on her subject and her place in Hungarian photography. Fortunately for her, at that time, MTI still maintained a qualitative approach. It was understood that the work of Edit Molnár was unorthodox, but she produced image material like no one else. Thanks to Kondor and his circle, she became part of a lively intellectual group, often visiting Kvint Presszó (Kvint Espresso Bar) in the company of Lajos Németh, Kata Dávid, and Mihály Czine. But this intellectual milieu also included István Gaál, the young Zsolt Durkó, Sándor Szokolay, Arnold Gross, János Pilinszky, and Zoltán Huszárik. Edit Molnár became a regular visitor to the legendary performances of the Egyetemi Színpad (University Stage), watched the works of a revitalised cinema and, above all, read voraciously.
Anyone with an eye for it could see that the young photographers, including Edit, were working with depth and commitment, with a fresh eye, but also with professional maturity. Edit Molnár consciously sought out her models, those who were already considered great elders in current Hungarian intellectual life, from Illyés and Kassák to Tersánszky, as well as representatives of the middle and younger generations. She did not choose from the “menu” dictated by official cultural policy, but based on her own taste and the advice of her friends.
In 1961, she caught the eye of the public with a triple exhibition with Demeter Balla and Ernő Tillai. The profession looked on with admiration, and she became known to the wider intellectual public.
From then on, she walked her path with confidence. In hindsight, and in the light of her unparalleled life's work, posterity might have the impression that Edit's professional path was a straight line. Moving with self-evident ease. Not quite. She had to struggle every day to fulfil her calling. To be able to photograph in her own mature, in-depth, time-consuming way, instead of producing undemanding, soulless, quantitative images. She was, after all, a news agency photojournalist who had to deliver pictures from the scene at all costs. Yet, sometimes she did not even take her camera out the first time she visited a writer or artist. She talked, she got to know them, she observed. And the model would become at ease in her presence without notice. No wonder. She always visited her famous models prepared and well-read. She was never satisfied with the results if she felt she could do better. She went back again, even though she had already done the “compulsory homework”, but she wanted better. And most of the time she managed to get an even better shot.
Despite all her individual successes, her situation at work was not easy. From the 1970s onwards, time eroded the privileges of MTI photographers, and the changing domestic press environment began to devalue the increasingly cumbersome agency. The management of the photo agency at the time sought to respond to this new situation with mass production and fierce news competition. The kind of demanding work that Edit Molnár was doing was increasingly becoming an undesirable eccentricity.
It was as if writers, painters, and musicians understood and appreciated her work better than her immediate colleagues. László Nagy held the opening for her first solo exhibition. And doors opened not to the MTI reporter, but to the well-known “recorder” Edit Molnár, who had accumulated a collection of photographs featuring the cream of Hungarian intellectual life, crafted in a way that was photographically novel and sophisticated. In addition to portraits, she also produced photo-reports, for example of the people of the Gyepsor, as evoked by the writer Péter Veress.
In the 1970s she presented increasingly large-scale exhibitions at the Vigadóand later at the Kunsthalle. Her iconic pictures of Hatvany, Illyés, Kassák or Pilinszky, and many other greats, as well as her Kondor-triptichon (Kondor Triptych) –which is, without exaggeration, one of the pinnacles of Hungarian photography – or her series of reports on the people of the Gyepsor became known to an ever-wider audience.
Since the 1980s, she has been publishing memoirs in which she recalls the events of her career and her photographic work in a highly enjoyable way. These memoirs are important treasures not only as historical records, but also as mementos of classic documentary photography.
[2015]
Notes
1. Klára Szarka: Something for something. A conversation with Edit Molnár, in: Fotográfia nőnemben (Photography in the Female Gender), Balassi Kiadó (Balassi Publishing House), Budapest, 2002