György Tóth: Portraits (1985–1991)

Rudolf Balogh Prize-winning photographer György Tóth is a prominent figure of contemporary Hungarian photography. Over the last thirty years his signature slow shutter studies of the human body in motion have been the central component of his oeuvre.

Before the 1990s, Tóth was still engaged in documentary photography. Portraits 1985–1991 is an important series from this period in several respects. He donated the negatives of the collection to the Photographic Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (ADK), rendering available for research never-before-seen images of artists and researchers connected with visual culture, such as János Vető, László Rajk, László feLugossy, and Miklós Peternák. The portrait collection also contains high-quality previously unpublished images of many prominent artists and contributors of the contemporary Hungarian photography scene. In addition to a collection of sixty-six film rolls (over 700 frames), György Tóth also included sixty-two signed digital prints, which had previously been featured in his exhibitions or in publications.

The pieces of the series document György Tóth network of professional contacts in the contemporary art scene of the 1980s. It also offers insight into an important period of his then ongoing oeuvre, when such props were already beginning to make their appearance from his dreamlike shots of the nineties as studio backgrounds, flashes, compositional elements and techniques for manipulating the subject of the portrait.

/Balázs Zoltán Tóth/