After completing his maturity exam in 1966, László Török began his career at the Magyar Filmlaboratórium (Hungarian Film Laboratory) as a probationary employee, and after two years of compulsory military service he returned there, working again from 1968 to 1970. At the Film Laboratory, József Hefelle placed a camera in his hands – someone Török regarded as his mentor for a long time. It was while still working at the Film Laboratory that he produced his first photograph to be exhibited. He recalls it as follows: “Even then, I already had in my mind the kind of constructed, staged images that I have continued to make ever since, and the idea occurred to me that I would photograph a male–female relationship by a steam locomotive at Keleti pályaudvar (Keleti Railway Station). In 1968 one could not simply take photographs at a railway station, so I went to the secretariat of “Uncle” Géza Dobrányi – which, incidentally, was always open to us – explained what I wanted to do, and they arranged everything, wrote the letter on the basis of which I received permission from the management of MÁV (Hungarian State Railways). I took the photograph, exhibited it at the photography competition – in fact, this was the first picture of mine that was ever hung on a wall. […] My uncle, Vidor Török, was a cinematographer, and when the time came to choose a career during my grammar school years, I naturally wanted to become a cinematographer myself, partly because of the family background – and, of course, because an Arriflex camera looks so good in one’s hands, especially if there are one or two girls nearby. By then I was already taking photographs with Uncle Vidor’s FED-2 rangefinder camera, although I was not yet sufficiently mature either professionally or intellectually. We were a poor family, yet my parents somehow managed to buy me a small film camera for a frighteningly large sum of money – seven thousand forints – and I even wrote screenplays, so I was very serious about becoming a cinematographer. Uncle Vidor said that the best way to learn the profession was to work one’s way up the ladder; this is essentially how I ended up at the Film Laboratory, at the developing machines. These were completely up-to-date André Debrie machines – sixteen-millimetre, thirty-five-millimetre, ‘dup-neg’– altogether perhaps fourteen of them, which ‘Uncle’ Géza Dobrányi may have brought in at the time. For me it was a fantastic experience, both because of the environment and the modern plant, and because of the life that went on there. It was also there that it became clear to me that the dream of becoming a cinematographer was moving further and further away, and that I would ‘carry out’ the ideas within me in another artistic field, because I am a very different kind of person – far more impatient than what the profession of cinematography demands.
‘Uncle’ Géza and the young engineers, László Attila Erdélyi and József Hefelle, created a pluralistic atmosphere at the Film Laboratory; everyone was treated as an adult and as a person of value. It was through Hefelle that I established a deep and lasting engagement with photography – he showed me what could be achieved with light and with composition. It was then that I made the first nude photographs of my life, and this beginning determined my way of thinking as a photographer; in fact, since then I have hardly moved away from the nude as a subject.” (Sándor Bacskai: Egy nagyüzem, ahová sok melós kellett. Beszélgetés Baricz Katival és Török Lászlóval [A Large-Scale Operation That Required Many Workers. A Conversation with Kati Baricz and László Török]. Fotóművészet, 2001, nos. 1–2.)
One who wants to become a photographer has to go to MTI (National News Agency) – we might hum a reworded version of the well-known folk song. Török did the same, as did so many others – for example János Vető, János Fenyő, or Károly Kincses – all of whom became lighting assistants at MTI Fotó (MTI Photo Department) more or less at the same time. Török joined in March 1970. They carried the brutally heavy Linhof equipment, Hasselblad sets, the large Bronica with its many film backs, the fifteen-kilogram flash units; they loaded magazines in the changing bag and held the second flash at various events. It was an excellent school for beginners – even for young people who had been irrevocably “inoculated” with photography. This was so even though their salary was one thousand forints and the place offered relatively few points of advancement, since the senior, tenured photojournalists guarded their positions very jealously. In this situation, Török did something that no lighting assistant had done before or since. In 1972, he caused a sensation with his photograph A család (The Family), winning the World Press Photo Grand Prize. The image decided his future course. It was the dream of every young person aspiring to photography to get in there, to work alongside experienced photographers, with relatively good equipment by the standards of the time and comparatively ample opportunity to pursue individual ambitions. “In 1970 I was transferred to MTI (National News Agency), where I worked in many different areas; it was there that I learned the profession and obtained my skilled worker’s certificate through them. Those three years were a period of learning and disappointment. I started in the colour laboratory and from there moved to the Illustration section; I was able to work, but later my presence there became rather scandalous. In 1972 I made my photograph A család (The Family), and it was sent as part of the MTI collection to the 1973 World Press Photo competition, where it won first prize in the general category. This had serious international resonance, but at home, unfortunately, the matter was approached quite differently: given the cultural-political climate of the time, it was only natural that a photograph should win with which they could not ideologically agree – they believed they discerned in it the disintegration of the socialist family and similar messages.” (Interview by Sándor Bacskai with László Török, 1996, MFM Hangtár)
“In the early 1970s we went down to the countryside to supplement our income and made “cheerful” images. This was quite a shocking experience for me, because I was already beginning to understand both the profession and life itself. I felt a profound contradiction in the fact that everyone was searching for the beautiful, the false, and wanted to achieve and certify this through a genre – photography – that is capable of nothing other than confirming realities. This was my point of departure. The image had existed as a sketch in my mind for several years; I had thought it through in advance, it had been in my head for years, and then in 1972 the opportunity arose for the four people visible in the photograph to come together. The married couple lived next door, the little boy was also the child of one of the residents, and Ibolya was an acquaintance of mine from the Kárpátia Restaurant. This was the image that shaped my belief that staged or pre-conceived photography can indeed have legitimacy; but at the same time it was a recognition that chance can also play a decisive role in photography, that the banality of the moment can convey values: in this image as well, the anthropological correspondences arose solely from contingency. At MTI at that time a great many pseudo-reportages were being produced; I did not want to do that, and I felt that if someone wished to engage with photography, that kind of practice was not something to be followed.” (Sándor Bacskai: Fotográfiai alkotó műhelyek: Pajta Galéria – Beszélgetés Török Lászlóval (Photographic Creative Workshops: Pajta Gallery – A Conversation with László Török). Fotóművészet, 1996, nos. 5–6.)
“This photograph was taken on Százados Street, in a very modest one-room-and-kitchen dwelling, with a 500-watt spotlight and a stretched backdrop. I told the older married couple that a naked girl would be sitting here with them. I set everything up – I worked with a Praktisix – and called Ibolya, who then walked in naked and sat down between them. “Uncle” Géza was quite taken aback, but I tried to distract their attention with instructions. Please look this way, you turn that way […] I exposed twelve frames and everyone left happily. Of the photographs, the most successful was the one in which the girl looks out of the picture.” (FotoVideó, June 2009.)
Sándor Bacskai asked him: “Did you apply to World Press Photo as a trainee?” Török replied: “At that time Éva Keleti was invited to join the jury, and at MTI (National News Agency) they thought they too had to open up, so they put together a collection. Before that, Jenő Alföldi had written a favourable review of my photograph in Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature), and that was how the work got into the selection. When the picture was judged in Amsterdam, they did not know who had made it, because my name was not even written on the back. I was not allowed to attend the award ceremony; later I learned that this was the very first image to be awarded. At MTI (National News Agency) the atmosphere around me froze within moments, which led to their declaring that I could not be a photographer there. They considered me talentless and even claimed that I had stolen the idea from somewhere; the main argument, however, was that the photograph did not represent Hungary, because it was provocative, and in the end they stated that I was unfit for a press career. My situation was extremely ambivalent. Also in 1972 I brought back a large body of work from Venice, which again caused a scandal, because I had taken ten rolls more than permitted. I also met many good people, among them Edit Molnár, but for example I was no longer allowed to work with Károly Gink – he was assigned a different lighting assistant; it was a rather counter-selective world. And of course I myself was not particularly disciplined either. I wanted to prove that I was mature enough for this profession, and my sole aim was for my relationship with photography to become definitive – and where could this be achieved if not at MTI (National News Agency)? After the death of section editor István Herczeg, my chances of staying there disappeared; more precisely, they told me that there was no problem, I could remain a lighting assistant even at the age of sixty. I realised that I could not become a photographer there.” (ibid.: Bacskai interview) It became clear to him that there would be little chance of advancement for him at MTI Fotó (MTI Photo Department): he could remain a lighting assistant for the rest of his life, but he would never become a photojournalist there. He resigned. “The following year, again at World Press Photo, I received third prize, and with this the very first stage of the long process of becoming an artist came to a close.” (ibid.: 43 év (43 Years), p. 1)
Between 1973 and 1975 he worked as a freelance photographer; pro forma, he became a photographer for the magazine Vu Touristique (Tourist View), which mattered a great deal at a time when “kmk” – the commonly used abbreviation for közveszélyes munkakerülés (avoidance of socially useful work, a criminal offence in socialist Hungary referring to the avoidance of officially registered employment) – entailed legal sanctions. Török described how he navigated this situation as follows: “I became a freelancer. From smaller assignments and outside jobs I earned relatively well. From the editor of Vu Touristique (Tourist View) I received a document stating that I worked for them on a regular basis, and with that I was fully covered.” (ibid.: Bacskai interview)
From 1 December 1975, he worked as a photojournalist at the Idegenforgalmi Propaganda és Kiadó Vállalat (Tourism Propaganda and Publishing Company, IPV), later becoming its picture editor. “My photographs are not snapshots. I do the work – during the week I work at the company, stockings and vegetables, and I think I am demanding even in that. Then at weekends and in the afternoons I make those few photographs that are my own. I live through situations which I then try to reconstruct…” (Mozgó Világ (Moving World), 1977, no. 4, pp. 64–71). “But problems arose here as well, because I too signed the charter protesting against the imprisonment of Václav Havel and his fellow writers. It seemed that I would have to leave, but fortunately this did not happen; in fact, I was even able to obtain a journalism degree. I believe I owe this to Tamás Moldován, the director of IPV, who then went on to support my photographic ‘waywardness’ for more than a decade… What I imagined photography to be simply could not be accommodated within my day-to-day photographic work.” (FotoVideó, June 2009).
In his free time, through his friend Viktor Paján – who had good connections within the artistic circles of the period – the photographic artist gained entry into the non-establishment art world that gathered at venues such as the Kárpátia Restaurant, the Hungária Restaurant, and the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists’ Club). Among those figures were István Ágh, Jenő Balaskó, István Bella, Sándor Csoóri, Péter Dobai, Kornél Döbrentei, Zoltán Huszárik, József Szervác, Károly Szikszai, G. Ciprián Csajka, Erzsi Tóth, Károly Bari, and Tibor Zalán. All of them, both collectively and individually, exerted an influence on the shaping of Török’s artistic career. “I learned the profession at MTI. And in the cafés, through my friends – poets and writers – I also learned something about life itself.” (Szellemkép (Phantom Image), 1978, nos. 2–3, p. 40.)
Dating from 1977 is his photographic series Egy kamera emlékére (In Memory of a Camera), which Török created in response to István Bella’s poem Halotti beszéd (Funeral Oration). “A kind of conceptual photography took shape in my work; I considered it very important that my images should be multi-layered in meaning. That is why, after A család (The Family), I stepped away from situations and photographs carrying very strong ‘idea codes’, because I felt that in them the role of the punchline was too dominant, which could hinder iconicity and a different mode of reception of the images.” (Szellemkép (Phantom Image), 1978, nos. 2–3, p. 41.) In this process he was greatly helped by his new environment, into which he was introduced by his friend Viktor Paján, and which naturally meant the company of many outstanding writers and poets – in other words, a further process of learning and orientation, followed by its integration into his own visual world.
Accepting the invitation of Iván Kocsis, he later became a member of the Dunakanyar Fotóklub (Danube Bend Photo Club). In 1973 he won third prize at World Press Photo in his own category. “I tried to photograph my further thoughts. At the ’74 World Press Photo my image Nincs időnk várni (We Have No Time to Wait) came third; after that I still made a few ‘idea photographs’, and then I more or less stopped doing this kind of work, because I realised that this type of ‘joking around’ was not viable – the idea was so strong that it almost endangered the iconic quality of the image. I had some less successful works, some that seemed like blind alleys, and then I began to think about reducing the ‘punchline’ element of photography as much as possible, about formulating things in the simplest, almost pictogram-like way. These images already appear as a more purified undertaking in my book Módosulások (Transformations). I tried to articulate them in a way that they would be original as well, but rather let the visual message be what makes them distinctive. This period lasted until 1983.” (ibid.: Bacskai interview)
The Magyar Fotóművészek Szövetsége (Association of Hungarian Photographic Artists) nominated him for the Szocialista Kultúráért (For Socialist Culture) award; at the time, a workplace recommendation also had to be attached. On 6 December 1983, the Idegenforgalmi Propaganda és Kiadó Vállalat (Tourism Propaganda and Publishing Company, IPV) wrote the following to the association’s executive secretary: “With reference to your letter no. 835/83 dated 14 November 1983, I hereby inform you that our colleague László Török has been employed by our company since 1 December 1975. He provides the company’s publications with photographs in accordance with requirements. In his other photographs – those not produced for the company – socialist content does not prevail. The images he produces may possess artistic value; however, it is not our task to judge this, and in our opinion they do not meet the human and political criteria on the basis of which you wish to nominate him for the award ‘Szocialista Kultúráért’ (For Socialist Culture). With comradely greetings, József Teszár.” (Typescript, private collection.)
In 1983 his exhibition Módosulások (Transformations) opened at the Helikon Gallery of the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle Budapest). In the same year, his first book was published under the same title by JAK (József Attila Kör – József Attila Circle, an association of young writers and poets), consisting entirely of brown and blue monochrome photographs. From the book-week presentation of the volume: “I say this to myself as well, because it is good to hear it: the reader is holding my first book in their hands. To appear with an independent photographic album in a series intended for emerging poets and writers is, beyond the honour itself, an acknowledgement that not only our age, but also our way of life and our work show many similarities. Only the tools, the modes of articulation, are different…” Tibor Zalán formulated the following in his preface: “Everyday images that have passed through modification, once placed back into an everyday environment, appear as something beyond reality, dreamlike in their floating quality, surrealistically associative. Török primarily composes reality itself, rather than the finished photograph. Instead of representation, he chooses expression. He works exclusively with staged arrangements… László Török is an all too strongly characterised artist. He stakes his life on a single, obsessively repeated gesture, regardless of the subject he touches upon. In truth, this gesture is his sole subject. He conjugates the same thing from his first image to his last.” (László Török: Módosulások (Transformations). JAK Füzetek 4, Magvető, Budapest, 1983.) “He seeks to liberate his photographs from the very material constraints imposed by black-and-white technique, yet at the same time he does not wish to fall into the perceived trap of colour photography either. […] By tinting his images blue, he in some way lifts them out of real objecthood into the objecthood of the picture-object. […] This blueness emphasises and highlights the significance of the creative gesture. […] In Török’s case, of course, we may also speak of other forms of manipulation: theatrical staging and arrangement, superimposition, all seek to draw our attention to the very fact of intervention. […] He also employs other means drawn from the visual arts, such as wrapping reminiscent of Christo, or happening-like arrangements. […] What he seeks to say is that art can exert its effect precisely because it has the capacity to modify reality. […] In blue, he relinquishes an entire range of the expressive means of traditional photography. Values and tonal gradations diminish, linear definition becomes blurred and softened, and it is therefore fitting that he should compensate for this in some way. Blueness is the colour of distance….” (László Fábián: Kék (Blue). László Török’s exhibition. Fotóművészet, 1983, no. 3, p. 46.)
In the early 1980s, together with Károly Bari, he took part in the poet’s research trips organised among Roma communities in Hungary and Transylvania, and the experiences and impressions gained there inspired the creation of his series Cigányok (Gypsies), which remains to this day his strongest body of work. “…for me it represented a very important stage within my visual world. Thanks to Károly, through the culture of a much-suffering people I was able to receive both an entry point and a return to the making of my images. This collection was presented in 1984 by the Gödöllői Galéria (Gödöllő Gallery) with an opening by Károly Bari, and later it had a second exhibition within the framework of Pécsi Kortárs Magyar Fotográfia ’97 (Pécs Contemporary Hungarian Photography ’97), with an expanded visual and literary material at the Janus Pannonius Múzeum Galériája (Gallery of the Janus Pannonius Museum), accompanied by a high-quality catalogue designed by Örs Hamóczy.” (ibid.: 43 év (43 Years), p. 2) Elsewhere, almost a decade and a half earlier, he put it this way: “I accompanied Károly Bari on several research trips, first within Hungary and later abroad, for example to Zala, Szabolcs, and Transylvania. […] During our journeys together, the image I had previously formed of the Roma changed fundamentally – this was one of the outcomes of this work. The other was that they helped me realise my intention to create a different kind of photography, one that corresponded to my own way of thinking, within an environment that thought about photography in a rather schematic way, where photographs appeared primarily as snapshot-like reportage images. I conceived the situations and the arrangements in advance, returned to the same locations several times, and thus the final image took shape.” (Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), 19 August 2002.)
In 1984, the Gödöllői Galéria (Gödöllő Gallery) presented the exhibition Cigányok (Gypsies), with which he justly drew attention to his work. Although Török photographed Roma subjects, he did not rely on the visual topoi commonly employed by others in similar situations; instead, he allowed himself to be guided by the poet. He did not create documentary photographs, but approached essential matters through the tools of abstract modes of representation. The photographs that appeared in the Cigányok (Gypsies) exhibition – and subsequently in numerous books and periodicals – spoke in Török’s own visual language about a problem that was already significant at the time and has since multiplied many times over: the survival and integration of a people of different culture and different roots, the affirmation of their own values, and/or assimilation. The life-size photographs became elements of equal importance within the images themselves, just as significant as the flesh-and-blood individuals staged on site, further reinforcing the fictional character of the work. Breaking with the black-and-white imagery favoured by documentary photographers and the colour images of reportage photography, he chose a distinctive cyan-blue hue, thereby intensifying his intention to distance the images, through a monochrome environment, from the mere reproduction of reality and to shift them into the objecthood of the image, where the metaphorical meanings of the colour blue dominate above all else.
Károly Bari articulated the nature of their collaboration as follows: “One distinctive feature of László Török’s exceptional talent is that his creative way of seeing is capable of elevating reality, organised into works, to a level of sacred significance. These photographs are not relics of compassion. […] Their novelty lies in the fact that they do not confront us with the horrifying signs of poverty or with people shattered by destitution; instead, they present a people preparing to reveal themselves and to discover their great secrets. They stand in front of their small houses, holding aloft the white sheet that longs to fall, behind which the lime has flaked off the wall in strange shapes, as if forming the map of a country.” (Károly Bari: A mozdulatlanság örökbefogadása (The Adoption of Stillness). In László Török: Cigányok (Gypsies). Exhibition catalogue. Pécs, 1997.)
The Török of Módosulások (Transformations) moved on towards his subsequent cycle, Idézetek (Quotations), in which every image reflected on former and contemporary figures of Hungarian literature and on their works. Here Török’s full photographic arsenal is already on display. The photographs are predominantly monochrome, with colour appearing mainly in shades of brown and blue. Double, triple, or motion-blurred exposures. Montage techniques. The frequent presence of the female body. Veils and crumpled backdrops. The image and the text appearing within a single picture with equal visual and semantic weight. With almost all of the writers who appear in his images either directly or indirectly, he also formed personal friendships. Many beer tankards and wine glasses were raised, countless nights were spent in conversation, many poems were read together. And then came the images – set in motion within Török by a word, a thought, a poem. He reflected at length on most of his pictures, wrote and drew sketches for them, selected from among models ever more precisely suited to the task, who contributed with their bodies to making visible a poetic idea that came into being twice over, in words and in images.
At his 1986 photographic exhibition entitled Idézetek (Quotations), held in Budapest at the Váci utcai Fotóművészeti Galéria (Photographic Art Gallery on Váci Street), these images of reduced tonal range were created primarily in response to the works of his writer and poet friends, as well as to those of earlier, eminent figures of Hungarian literature.
In 1984, Török purchased a peasant house in the Káli Basin, in Salföld, initially as a holiday home; seven years later it became the Pajta Galéria (Pajta Gallery), and gradually also a restaurant and guesthouse, and by now Török’s living space, where he receives those who visit him. “I earned fairly well at IPV, it looked as if I had some money; I was not thinking of a holiday home, I definitely wanted to buy a peasant house. In autumn, during the grape harvest, I happened upon Salföld; the village was deserted, and I came across this house. I went up into the vineyard, the owner was harvesting at the time, we discussed it, and I bought it for four hundred thousand forints. It was a tiled-roof house; I had it converted back to a thatched roof, and over the course of a few years I had it gradually restored.” (ibid.: Bacskai interview) In 1991 he established the Pajta Galéria (Pajta Gallery), where he organised exhibitions and nude workshops together with András Bozsó, Lajos Keresztes, and others. The first exhibition opened on 21 June 1991 under the title The Wall, with the subtitle Denver–2. The title refers to the exhibition of Eastern European photographers held earlier that spring in Denver, Colorado, where the Hungarian photographers exhibiting here had also been represented with their works (among others: Péter Tímár, László Török, Ernő Fejér, András Balla, János Vető, Attila Vécsy, István Halas, Kálmán Gábos, György Tóth, Gábor Kerekes, János Szerencsés, Lenke Szilágyi, etc.). “I found several good reasons to undertake the opening of this new gallery. The first is freedom: the freedom to create galleries anywhere in the country. To test our independent ideas. There is no longer a central jury, no cultural policy. Thus artists can freely choose galleries, and galleries can choose artists. I consider it likely that most galleries – and most artists as well – will opt for quickly saleable art; yet in the long run it will not be they who become the wealthiest, but those who dare to take risks. It has been almost two years since I returned home from former West Berlin, where I was a DAAD scholarship holder, and at home nobody was interested in what I had done there. László Török, the founder of this gallery, was the first to ask me to present my Berlin works. That is why I am here…” (Opening text by György Galántai).
In 1992 the Pajta Galéria (Pajta Gallery) exhibition bore the title XL fotográfiák (XL Photographs), while the 1994 exhibition was presented under the title Helyzetkép (Situation Report). He organised a symposium on experimental photography, and from 1994 onwards he began to run international nude-photography artists’ camps. “When I received the Kodak Prize in Düsseldorf in 1991, I decided that, in order to mitigate the absence caused by the closure of the Photographic Art Gallery, I would create an exhibition space in my barn in Salföld, in the Káli Basin. This was realised in June 1991, and the Pajta Galéria (Pajta Gallery) has been operating ever since – next year it will mark a quarter of a century.”
“For several years now I have been living here together with many of the village’s artists, and we are open to those interested in photographic art both winter and summer. The gallery’s permanent collection exhibition presents more than one hundred photographs by forty emblematic figures of Hungarian photography, spanning an interval of some sixty years. Three years ago, at the same site, I also established the Gábos Kálmán Emlékszoba (Gábos Kálmán Memorial Room), where, in memory of my late friend, I organise small-scale exhibitions with changing thematic focuses.”
“I am living out my autumn years here, and I am striving to preserve a good number of my unfinished photographs on silver-based media in this wonderful environment.” (ibid.: 43 év (43 Years), p. 3.)
In 1998 his solo exhibition entitled Huszonöt év (Twenty-Five Years) opened at the Exhibition Hall of Budapest Galéria (Budapest Gallery). In the preface to the catalogue, Tibor Zalán wrote of him: “Török, in my conviction, is a lyricist – a poet who formulates his verses in the language of photography. These are gentle and melancholic poems, in which first-person subjectivity predominates; much like a filter placed on the lens, he envelops his subject in distinctive, bittersweet lights. […] At the time of his emergence in the late 1970s, Török appeared before his audience fully armed, as a finished artist who knew precisely how he wished to present himself to the public. […] Already then he delineated his own field of movement within the innumerable possibilities of photographic art. The states and situations articulated almost exclusively through the nude presuppose such intimate, subtle shifts and tremors of the soul that they can scarcely be accounted for outside the realms of poetry – perhaps music – leading the viewer of works that have by now expanded into a life’s oeuvre to the impression that there is no change in László Török’s art, and above all no progression. Yet of course there is. […] In all his work, Török is concerned with solitude – or rather, he is guided by his own solitude.”
His career began with invented, staged, situational images similar to A Család (The Family), scenes conceived and thought through in every detail, which he often tinted brown. He achieved success with these works, yet he sensed precisely that, over time, the small, punchline-driven stories would become more important than the images themselves, and with keen intuition he changed direction. Thereafter, he turned for an extended period to blue-toned imagery featuring nude female figures blurred through long exposures. His speculative, literarily inspired images were prompted by living and deceased poets and writers, by their poems and works. He thinks, arranges, and plans – and only then are his images born. Of his exhibition Idézetek (Quotations), it was written: “…each of the displayed groups of images referred to deceased and living figures of our literature, and to their works. Török, who mostly employs monochrome colours, double or motion-blurred exposures, and montage techniques, did not refrain this time either from the frequent inclusion of the female body – perhaps the most central element of his visual arsenal.” (–int.: Idézetek. A Fotóművészeti Galériában kiállított képeiről (Quotations. On the Images Exhibited at the Photographic Art Gallery). Fotó, June 1986.) Yet the most important part of his oeuvre to date is the series Cigányok (Gypsies), created with the assistance of Károly Bari. “I consider myself a conceptual photographer; I have close relationships with many writers and poets, and the ideas behind many of my images are of literary origin. My series Cigányok (Gypsies), for example, is the result of my acquaintance with Károly Bari. In it I did not choose the approach to representing Roma life that most people follow; instead, I worked through the inspirations I received from the poet.” (FotoVideó, June 2009.) Images inspired by literature are indeed frequent in his work, and he willingly applies tools drawn from the visual arts to them as well. It can be said that Török found his own path already with his first images, and after a few tentative detours he proceeds straight along it – or rather, let us not exaggerate, he steadily makes his way. He also knows – as a well-read and cultivated person – that in art the true values and points of interest are most often to be found in border zones, in the intermedial sphere, where one or more artistic disciplines, modes of expression, or technical approaches come into contact. He explores the boundaries between the very concrete image and conceptuality as well. “The kind of photographic coding with which I work requires that I know in advance what the image will be like. If I feel an impulse, say from a literary work, I draw it, I make sketches. Despite the fact that the vast majority of my images are messages articulated with the help of women, literary connections play a very important role in my oeuvre.” (FotoVideó, June 2009.)
“To your question as to why I photograph: if I were able to give an answer, I would have no need for a camera, and the matter would become simpler for both of us. My first serious work, A család (The Family), which I made in 1972, immediately confronted me with my situation at the time. Its reception simultaneously meant success (World Press Photo 1973, G.F. category, Golden Eye) and failure (MTI, 1973, loss of position). […] My works are conceptually motivated, sensitive approaches to communication and human relationships. They posit the idea that photographable reality is only one among many possible realities. […] For me, the compatibility of the poetic image and the photographic image became evident not only because from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s writers and poets constituted my circle of friends (Kárpátia, Hungária), but also because I expected a new, different quality from the simultaneous presence of the two art forms. […] Experimental photography was the milieu that offered the possibility of articulating otherness. Many have formulated this in various ways; I believe that works carrying clearly artistic codes signal this period far more effectively than any kind of documentary photography…” (László Török: A költői kép (The Poetic Image), pp. 59–60, source not indicated. See: Habik, article collection.)
László Török has participated in more than fifty group exhibitions in Hungary and abroad and has received numerous awards. His solo exhibitions have been presented not only in Hungary but also in Spain, Finland, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Taiwan, France, and Slovakia. Of his oeuvre – which, after forty years of being repeatedly rephotographed, can hardly amount to more than approximately five hundred images, and of which at least three hundred feature nude female figures – alongside A család (The Family), perhaps the most important part to date is the series Cigányok (Gypsies), created with the assistance of Károly Bari. Equally significant, with only slight exaggeration a feat of photographic history, is the fact that following the ignominious closure of the legendary Fotóművészeti Galéria (Photographic Art Gallery) in Váci Street, he nevertheless went on to open the Pajta Galéria – the first small, privately run gallery of its kind in Hungary. What is more, he not only opened it, but has not closed it since. For more than a quarter of a century. This achievement was further amplified by his leadership of the Első Alkotócsoport (First Creative Group), by organising exhibitions both in Hungary and abroad, by editing photographic books, and by making a film about his contemporaries. Through all of this, he has become an inescapably important figure in Hungarian photographic life. I consider this capacity as a cultural organiser, community-builder, and creator of spaces to be at least as significant as his photographic oeuvre itself, which has been analysed at length above.
[2016]