From October 7th 2010 to Januar 9th 2011, the Ludwig Museum Budapest presents the first retrospektive exhibition of Martin Munkacsi and brings the photographic work of one of the most influential Hungarian photographers of the 20th century back to his hometown Budapest

 

For him, Fred Astaire danced on his toes, for him the ladies jumped into the air –

Martin Munkásci brought dynamics and movement into the so far static photography of the 1920s and inspired generations of photographers. The expressive photographer is widely acclaimed as an unequaled sports and reportagephotographer and as the epitome of modernity.

 

Curated by F.C. Gundlach in 2005 for the opening of the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the show Martin Munkacsi – Think while you shoot will be on display at the Ludwig Museum Budapest from October 7^th 2010 to January 9^th 2011, in the town, where Munkacsi discovered photography as his live’s calling.

 

"Think while you shoot!“ Munkacsi expressed his photographic credo with these words for the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar in 1935. Those four words superbly characterize his way of working and the impact of his photographs – spontaneous, unforced, dynamic, with an overabundance of joie de vivre. They are evidence of a gift which distinguishes Munkacsi as it has few other photographers: the intutitive grasp of the moment. With lightning-quick speed, he was able to gauge movement, get a feel for fleeting compositions, to be in the right place at the right time and release the shutter.

 

Munkacsi’s grasp of dynamics can already be seen in the early photos he took for the Hungarian newspaper Pesti Napló. In 1928 he left Hungary bound for Berlin, the lively European metropolis and the epitome of the "Roaring Twenties“. There he had the good fortune of the self-educated man: The Ullstein publishing house made Munkacsi chief photographer of the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung, at that time the illustrated broadsheet with the highest circulation in the world. Munkacsi's range of subjects is broad, spanning sports, reportage and fashion.

During his years in Berlin (1928–1934), Munkacsi worked and published at the top of his field and perfected his craftsmanship in all areas of photography, achieving a mastership that we can rediscover today.

1933 became a turning point for Munkacsi, too. The cosmopolitan and avantgarde Berlin regressed under the Nazis to a deployment center for SA and SP. The Ullstein Verlag was "arianized" and the Jewish managing editor Kurt Korff and publishing director Kurt Szafranski were dismissed. In May 1934 Munkacsi left Germany for the USA, where he reached the pinnacle of his fame with his publications in Harper’s Bazaar, Life and Ladies’ Home Journal. He would, however, also fall from great heights in the USA.

 

Since 2005 on tour in the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, the International Center of Photography (ICP) New York, the Museum of Modern Art San Francisco and the Moscow House of Photography, the retrospective exhibition has saved the photographic oeuvre of one of the most important photographers of the 20th century from oblivion and received enthusiastic acclaim from press and public all over the world

 

Exhibition and book, published by Steidl in Göttingen, would not have been possible without the loans and the support by the photographers daughter, Joan Munkasci (1948–2008), by ullstein bild Berlin, by the F.C. Gundlach Foundation Hamburg and the Howard Greenberg Gallery New York. Thank you.

 

Martin Munkácsi: Think While You Shoot

October 07, 2010. - January 09, 2011

Ludwig Museum

Komor Marcell u. 1

Budapest, H-1095