Ferenc Olasz (1943), photographer and film director, in a previous life – if he had one – likely conversed with God. Since he longed for heaven, as we all long for the unknown, for the infinite, he leaned a ladder against the sky so that – up, up! – he could finally arrive there... But where, exactly? To a landscape full of light, where the Lord was enthroned. He was attracted by the music of the spheres in the spacious square – obviously in a clearing surrounded by angels – and especially by the wisdom (the carver of our human face) that radiated from the Creator.
Those were biblical times, chock-full of verses quoting prophets, of good advice, as if the air stirred by an angel's wing also meant a breeze of freedom for the visitor – our release from the darkness of earthly hell. From the shackles that man has wrapped around himself through various conquests. The more he wanted to be free, the tighter the noose became.
But this adventurousness of the past, though never (?) really existing, continued in the present in the work of the artist, blessed with vision, who also saw the face of the Lord in the face of things and objects. We could call this state a creative spirit, since for him the photographic camera and the movie camera brought in the universe. Alsópáhok, the land of his birth – its peasants with furrowed faces, the earth cleaved by God's knife, the plough, the scones carried in the curse-cloth of poverty – became the spell that started it all.
If the light of the Festetics family's old Helikon in Keszthely did not shine so much on the young teacher – who later studied history and Hungarian as well as music – as a child (why shouldn't it have?), he felt the suggestion of a spirit laden with knowledge: the garden, the garden of knowledge, is nothing but an oasis. It offers gentle relief, a liberating example to those not hesitant to embrace the message. Encyclopaedic knowledge is the elixir of life. A single slice of it cultivates the soul, sensitising it to what is visible and what lies beyond the visible.
For Ferenc Olasz, the conscience-evoking, undulating small country (Zala, Vas counties) – Alsópáhok, Cserszegtomaj, Vönöck, Gétye, etc., exciting with their melodious and snarling village names – was the visible, memorable world itself (later this expanded into a Carpathian Basin vista). As he had said, he wanted to build a temple of Beauty and Love with his pictures, in which the word of God and silence (the promoter and obscurer of our enlightenment) would have inhabited the vaults. Accompanied by the light of a candle brought by man.
Even the vault of life? The question is almost unaskable, since even in the semi-socio-photographic or ethnographic photographs – the wrinkled human face (Jóska Lázás, Alsópáhok), the bulging, vein-covered hand (Aunt Piroska – Alsópáhok), the plastered greyish-white house wall (Gétye), the carved Székely Gate (Szelyke), the thatched farmhouse (Nagykutas), the painted tin Christ (Zalacsány) and the carved wooden headstone in Gyimesközéplok, and I could list a thousand other sacred props captured on lens – one perceives, alongside the flicker of reality, the presence of sacrality as a celestial magic power. Of course it is life, of course it is destiny, history, struggle, but willy-nilly it all rises – first and foremost because of the photographer's spiritual orientation – to the region (or heights?) of prayer, chanting, and penance performed for purification.
Self-confession also provides a support for understanding this life path, exemplary in its sublimity.
“I have immortalised treasures that are evidence of the thousand-year-old culture of Hungary, and will forever remind us of the praise of God by mostly unknown masters. These artistic relics are part of universal culture, carrying the message of a people blessed with faith and talent, the Hungarians. What did I want to achieve with my pictures? Naturally: to confess about myself and about everything I saw and how I saw it. To save something of the fleeting miracle we call life. My gifts are signs of God's trust in me. I am obliged to account for the talent I have been given. It is my responsibility. Here stand before me the pictures I have photographed over past decades: people, angels, crosses, Marys, Christs, mountains, flowers, pear trees, tears, memories…”
The confession, born in connection with the exhibition at Vigadó, projecting themes written in pictures and light over half a century, echoes the abundance of life. Its concluding moment transcends the realm of fine art (aesthetics). “Can my pictures, books, films say something comforting – as music comforts – can art be used to pray?” It is evident that the photographer – no matter what (very consciously chosen!) object is placed in front of his lens – wants to reach beyond the documentary circles of reality (although that would not be worthless either), because he is interested in meanings beyond them. More precisely: the terrain they can explore, which, in addition to aesthetics, often suggests dramatic poignancy, and which happily lands in celestial circles. The terrain of the soul, the terrain of thinking, the terrain of compassion as a human (Christian!) form of behaviour.
Of course, those who do not penetrate so deeply into the world of Ferenc Olasz's photography and film – a vision of reality and a pilgrimage through cultural history – can also enjoy the uniqueness of the composition as a whole (setting, structure, thematic, motif system, etc.), the radiance of its message. But only those who also explore the layers beyond the visible – those who venture into them – really partake (with mythical, symbolic richness) in the shattering experience of the images, “photo-paintings”, the holiness embedded in the landscape's envelope, for example the angel kneeling in the snowy landscape (angel statue) as a penitential devotion.
The various gates, beautiful examples of which are the Székelykapuk (Székely Gates) (1989), are rich in biblical (Christ-evoking) symbolism – “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.” (John 10:9) – just as the thousand-shaped crosses and corpuses (Vál, Gyulakeszi, Pálosremete, Lesencefalu, Egyházashetye, Mohora, Gheorgheni, Csíkmadaras, Ábelfalva, etc.) have a well-known double meaning; since the cross is a symbol of life and death, and the body on it is a testimony of the suffering of Christ for us, which fulfilled the redemption of mankind.
The eye that sees well and makes others see even better – because it is spiritualised – does not distinguish between materials (wood, stone, tin, etc.), even if the double cross of the personified Transylvanian landscape (Csomád), for example, would require a softer, organic material instead of stone. The often naïve depiction of the fading past – the rain-beaten, wind-swept tin Christs and the woodworm-eaten, time-ravaged wooden headstones – compels a visual confession just as much as the eruption or even the blending into the landscape of small chapels (Perkő – Transylvania, Nagytótlak – Slovenia) that convey modernity in antiquity.
Following the chronological path of his life, we become more and more convinced that for Ferenc Olasz, development does not (not only) mean a wealth of pictorial variation. His landscapes, “painted” with photography because they are like paintings, have characterised him before, but his enrichment in this genre – see the earthly-heavenly storm of the 2011 Te Deum (pages 206–207) or the sunset-apocalypse of the 2013 album Dicsértessék (Praise be) (pages 104–105) – is a product of an era closer to our own.
And perhaps more importantly: the photograph and the photo become something like an object of meditation. As it stirs up spiritual storms, it becomes one. It is, on the one hand, a devotional immersion – enriched by literary and biblical quotations – in the Christian doctrines approached with ever more fervour at the source of inspiration, and on the other, a confession attracting a stretched (crucified!) prayer-pose. This change has nothing to do with the colouring of the images – it is easy to see that the still images taken from the cultically sacred films (Szózat (Appeal) – Vértesszentkereszt; Magyar szentek (Hungarian Saints) – Ócsa, Nagybörzsöny, Bélapátfalva, etc.) can be considered as independent photographs – but rather stems from the photographer's self-absorption and his individual tragedy (his deceased wife enriched the choir of angels through her beauty turned into sorrow). And from the flowering of a mind deepened by thought, increasingly searching in sacred literature (Bible, poetic works).
As we mentioned earlier, the budding photographer did not start from the chaotic, stifling terrain of the Socialist Realist era – as did more than one of his colleagues at the time –, but was held captive by the props of ethnographically interesting and attractive folk beliefs (tin Christs, Marys, stone and iron crosses). And the sanctity of the land, and with it the working peasants exposed to poverty. Alsópáhok and its surroundings, the native land, and the more distant landscapes were glorified in these photographs authenticated by these pictorial moments.
The naive representation (blotch, line, dot, comma) worthy of a chant was a prayer in itself. In these photos, the face (Mary – Szamostölgyes, Budafa; Christ – Sajó, Örménykút) almost reminds us of Picasso's modernity. And the magnificent stone and tin Christs are the chants lifted here from the devotional rests along the way (Cserszegtomaj, Zalagyömrő, Mánfa, Oroszló, Csíksomlyó, as well as Nagylám, Zalacsány, Máragyulafalva, Szirák). But also the resplendent stone and tin Marys (Gyenesdiás, Cserszegtomaj, Rezi, Nemesgulács, or Girádtótfalu, Magosfalu, Pálosremete), not to mention the Pietas of various forms (Jászberény, Balatonederics), are textbook examples of folk sacrality in which memory elevates reality (local faces are often portrayed as saints) to the high heavens.
Ferenc Olasz Feels at Home Among Them.
The precisely recorded details of his life path are infinitely important – the photographer was born in Alsópáhok in Zala County, finished primary school in his native village, went to secondary school in Keszthely, obtained a teaching degree in Hungarian-History-Music in Eger, then a degree in Hungarian history in Szeged; after graduating from the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, he worked as a director for Hungarian Television from 1972 to 2002, is credited as creator of more than a hundred films, has had exhibitions in many parts of the world: from Alsópáhok to Paris, from Tihany to Rome, has ten art albums to his name, etc. – but perhaps more important than these is the change in the stages of his career, which coincides with the highest level of awareness of image poetry.
Of course, there is crossover between the two scenes – all the more so because one can sense how reality has been transformed into a spirit reaching for sacred heights – and neither could exist without the other. But we are more interested in pulsations in the course of life, or more precisely in the enrichments received at each station. The not insignificant basic level, I mentioned, was ethnographic orientation. It is no coincidence that the photographer's first book, Fejfák (Wooden Headstones) (1975), was accompanied by an afterword of essay value by Dr. Károly Kós of Cluj, son of the brilliant polymath. The report titled Ékes fejfáinkról (On Our Ornate Headstones), decorated with drawn examples, takes stock of all the variations of this kind of cultural-historical value, following the guidance of Balázs Orbán.
And already here began the “spiritual process” – the culmination of which is vividly shown in the later volumes and albums – in which the author added a cluster of literary quotations to the many photographs of folk objects (which is itself image poetry!). The texts, each more beautiful than the last, the testimonies of the famous (Péter Apor, Albert Szenczi Molnár) and anonymous (collected from many informants), have a cultural-historical flavour, but the powerful message they contain is even more striking. Like the folk song collected by Béla Bartók (the informant is Mihály Gerebenes from Ehed – Marosszék), which spices up the pain of passing with a vision of the future: “You stars shine, / You stars shine, Think above me, / Think above me”.
In the photographs, the power of wood as a material (Fejfák (Wooden Headstones), Székelykapuk (Székely Gates)) is taken over, albeit not exclusively, by tin, stone, wall. Perhaps it could be said that the black-and-white Mindörökké (Forever) (1978) and the album Dicsértessék (Praise be) (1989), containing colour photographs and dedicated to the memory of László Nagy, with their brilliant corpuses, Christ and Mary depictions, most of which, unfortunately, have fallen victim to time, have increasingly landed in sacral circles imagined by the photographer-writer. The enlarged details, though not new, and the texts (Bible, Albert Szenczi Molnár, handwritten prayers, peasant chants), also well chosen, turn the props of the past, precious as artefacts, into real poetry.
If Ferenc Olasz's previous books and albums are called elegant – in their selection, their structure, their cropping – then, starting with the two-volume Mindörökkön örökké (Forever and Ever) (2001–2002; second edition 2008), the external appearance also contributed to the success of these books, conceived in beauty. The exceptional continuation – Ecce Homo I–II (2005–2006), Te Deum (2011), Dicsértessék (Praise be) (second, expanded edition, 2013), Passió – Kálváriák a Kárpát-medencében (Passion – Calvaries in the Carpathian Basin) (2015) – is characterised by the same.
It is hardly a coincidence that the author has added the subtitle “A meditation book”, not insignificant in itself, on the front of the book Mindörökkön örökké, dedicated to the memory of his loved ones. In other words: a spiritual summary. A proof of his immersion – his repentance accompanied by picture (photo) and prayer. It is a book of drifting power, since every day of the year there is a picture and a text to proclaim the eternal validity of life framed by death as beauty. Its summarising character is indisputable, with new and old images (farmhouse, belfry, portrait, Pietà, sculpture, landscape, fresco) alternating. But the earlier photographs (accompanied by other texts) have been rearranged in a new – rhythmically new – structure, thus enhancing their spiritual radiance.
An image taken from a film excerpt (Magyar szentek (Hungarian Saints)) is mixed with a farmhouse in Böde, a church in Csaroda, a statue of St. Stephen in Esztergom, a grave cross (Perbál), an altar statue in Levoča (Lőcse), a stone Christ in Cserszegtomaj, a glass icon (Mary with the baby Jesus) in Gyimesfelsőlok. But there is a strict order to this blend. Just one example! The altar of St. Elizabeth's Cathedral in Košice (Kassa) is immediately followed by statues of the Suffering Christ (Solymár, Keszthely, Szeged).
The enrichment compared to the previous ones is also evident in the sensitively selected texts (the “image-accompanying” texts, which enhance the atmosphere), since besides the Bible, the Book of Psalms, St. Augustine, church folk songs and various folk texts, quotations from the poems and prose of our classics (Pál Esterházy, Sándor Petőfi, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Attila József, Sándor Reményik, Jenő Dsida, Áron Tamási, Sándor Márai, Albert Wass) also appear. The climax is probably the pairing of Dsida's great poem, the Psalmus Hungaricus, with early personal photographs of Alsópáhok (Aunt Piroska, Uncle Jóska, Aunt Lina, Uncle Józsi), as a result of which the personal pain and anguish expands into a universal one.
Another step towards justification is Ecce Homo, which echoes Christ's experience of suffering in its title. “When we rest our eyes on the front of the book,” I wrote when the album was released, "of course the words of Pilate, leading Jesus before the crowd, come to mind first, and the crown of thorns that completed this life journey precisely through martyrdom, but the journey to Golgotha – a little selfishly? perhaps, but in an honourable way – is also suffered in their earthly wanderings by all those people dwelling from Alsópáhok to Karcfalva (Cârța) (Csíkszék) whom the plough of misery has cut, whose faces are similar to the furrows of thirsty earth.”
“You only have to run through the chapter titles of the cycles – Blessing, Grace, Tear, Angel, Silence, Bread, Soul, Faithfulness, Love – to see what, and especially how many grace-filled moments have been given to the artist, so that the inspiration mined from his soul – drawn forth with some kind of love-hymn – could be realised in external sacred or near-sacred objects and in the human face recalling the face of Jesus (our undeniable image of truth).”
It is impossible to read without being moved by the love-poem-prayer with which the image-poet, mourning his wife, embraces the sweetheart who has finally been taken to the heavenly choir, that is, to the Angels. “Holy Guardian Angel, my faithful friend and companion of my earthly pilgrimage, / Whom the Heavenly Father has sent to my protection. / I give thanks to you for all your love for me / and for the providence with which you watch over my salvation.”
Two large colour albums, Te Deum and Passió – Kálváriák a Kárpát-medencében (Passion – Calvaries in the Carpathian Basin), dedicated to the memory of Imre Makovecz, complete (there will obviously be a sequel!) the vast journey that Ferenc Olasz has made from the hilly landscape of Alsópáhok to the celestial field that cannot be marked with geographical coordinates. Willingly or unwillingly, even if his modesty would forbid the name, in the direction of justification.
In his thinking, in his love of images, in his fear for Hungarians, he has become a saint whom the machine-gun fire of the confusion of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can no longer catch. His courageous fear drove away all evil.
In his colourful picture-prayers, sensitively quiet but not lacking the passion of suffering, the Apostles of Keszthely and the Three Kings of Velemér are alloyed with the famous church of Perkő, as well as the St. Paul statue of Tápióság and the Holy Trinity statue of Bernecebaráti. It is not the genre specificity (mural, stone statue, etc.) that counts, but the depth of the faith placed in them and radiantly flowing out. The statues of St. Florian in Letenye with a face distorted by time, St. Mary with the Child Jesus in Horvátzsidány, St. Anthony of Padua in Palotabozsok, the snow-white face of St. John of Nepomuk (near Bardejov (Bártfa)), or the gesture of St. Ladislaus in Sopronhorpács holding the globus cruciger – protecting and uplifting his people – burn into us with more certainty than a premonition
Opposite the poem Kereslek, Isten (I Seek You, God) by Transylvanian poet János Bartalis – a brilliant pair of pages! – the crowns of trees pierced with light stretch radiantly up to the sky, and the subsequent, truly spiritualised tree variations with cobweb light and bark wounds are also a chant written in images. The chamomile flooding the green sea of grass – one of the landscapes mixing pleasantness with serenity – actually touches the sky as there is no horizon. Poetic brushwork? Yes, if the adjective can be applied to photographs at all. Even in the infinity of the snowy landscape, though reduced to a dot by distance, lives the Christ with raised hands (was the cross carried away by the flood?), as a memento for the seers and researchers of ages to come.
Tangibly heavy, actually weighing several kilos, is Olasz's masterpiece, the album Passió (Passion). Although the ensemble of images therein spans half a century – the Magyarpolány series was taken in 1967, and the Győr photos in November 2014 – there is no doubt about its pulsating contemporaneity. The photographer – let's dream the dream! – pushed the cart transformed from a Roman chariot until a single magical flight placed the contraption onto the road of the Carpathian Basin (the terrain of our life and trust), “paved” with thorns, but sometimes illuminated by the light of the Sun.
Sometimes the voice of the Canadian priest poet Tamás Tűz – one of the stations of the Calvary in Sopron is bright because of him – sometimes the voice of Sándor Sík, singing of the solitude of Jesus taking the cross (Smolenice, Highlands), echoes from space, writing the dark grey cloud mass and our Golgotha fear into the sand of the once-only existence – Lord, have mercy! Let us see the latter! “With a great unknown fire, the new mystery of existence vibrated on his eyes and brow and the crown of thorns, / And he opened his arms wide, gentle and sad, and embraced the dread cross.”
With his beautiful Calvary walk, Ferenc Olasz naturally lectures the provinces close to emotion, which also train our world of faith. The chosen poets – in addition to Tamás Tűz and Sándor Sík mentioned above, St. Francis of Assisi, Jenő Dsida, Sándor Reményik, György Rónay, and Lajos Olosz – give an atmospheric charge to the history of Christ's suffering. Neither iconographic knowledge nor religious studies literacy are necessary to understand and absorb the biblically fuelled masterpieces of this photographic poetry. The multitude of Pietas (Balf, Lövő, Nagycenk, Hegykő, Ugod, Zalaszántó, Zalaszentmárton, Sármellék, Csór, Jászboldogháza, Jászberény, Rábakecöl, Fertőszéplak) awaken our conscience with characteristic statues.
Ultimately, the crossroad created in this way is beautiful and uplifting because Ferenc Olasz wanders on it for us with his boots polished by faith.
[2017]