As ever, less is known, less widely about them, but some were quite wonderful. For instance there is Kata Kálmán (1909-1978), who documented working class life in Hungary, like this:
And like this:
I take these photos from here and there. There is a single comment on the page with the boy eating bread. Thanks, I was looking for a high-res picture of that boy, eating bread. By the way the picture was taken in 1931, the boy's name was Varga Laci (family name, given name order), he was 4 years old, and he died in the same year.
Or there is Kata Sugár (1910-1943), about whom I can find little:
And the marvellous Sylvia Plachy (1943-)
and Kati Horna (1912-2000):
Kati Horna was the close friend of Robert Capa in Berlin and Paris, and - so it seems -already established herself, introduced him to the right people for whom he could work. She then photographed the Spanish Civil War. Not the front, not so much the combatants, but its effect on people generally.
I have draft of the essay that needs a good deal of overhauling and I still have the cold, now in stage two, the stuffed up stage.
5 comments:
Powerful images, and on some level distressing. Since that day, all is changed utterly, and a terrible ugliness is born. Hard not to feel trivial by comparison. Inexhaustible subject, photography.
The little boy is certainly distressing, Alfred, but there is always the memento mori, it will never come again, and 'the only other time I will look so still is when I'm dead' feeling at the back of the heart.
Someone somewhere thinks - I was recently reading his opinion - that the habit of some cultures to display a photograph on the grave is vulgar. I disagree. I think there might be seven photos on each for the seven ages of man.
And isn't that top portrait the most wonderful thing!
Yes, the top portrait. Powerful, arresting, like some of the max Beckman self portraits.
As the mother of two four year old boys, the dying child is heart rending.
Funerals I've been to lately, or at least visitations, have featured photos of the departed. I love this. It's like saying, that, over there, in the coffin, isn't him. Here she is, full of life, part of our lives as we were part of hers.
Yes, Beckmann but also August Sander, Dana. You have twins?
I don't see why one wouldn't have photographs.
Twin boys, identical, age 4. Daughter age 7. Work full time. Why I'm always a mess.
Will look up Sander.
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