Gergely Papp: 1938–1963 Ecsegfalva, Hungary
Tibor Miltenyi
Bone Idle and Archive of Modern Conflict
English
Texts by David Franklin and Tibor Miltenyi
Softcover
128 pages
162 x 230 mm
2018
ISBN 9780995185548
Enigmatic Hungarian photographer Gergely Papp (1922–2000) was born into a peasant family, on a farmstead in Pusztaecseg (now Ecsegfalva) in Eastern Hungary. He would live there for the rest of his life. In 1938, Papp learned the mechanics of photography from his brother and took to depicting life in the village: christenings, harvests, hunting, weddings, funerals and much more. Papp documented provincial life in Hungary before and throughout World War II, the communist regime and failed 1956 revolution. He eventually stopped taking photographs in early 1963. Distressed by the forced nationalisation of the family’s land, Papp went out, cut down his fruit trees and took a final self-portrait in the remains. The life and work of Gergely Papp was little known until his images were encountered by Hungarian art historian Tibor Miltenyi in the 1990s, shortly before Papp’s death. While much of Papp’s archive was destroyed by local vandals, the Archive of Modern Conflict has acquired the few surviving negatives; many appear here, published for the first time.
(Source: https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/gergely-papp-1938-1963-ecsegfalva-hungary/)
About the Artist
Tibor Miltenyi graduated from the photography program at Kisképző (the Secondary School and Boarding School of Fine and Applied Arts), and in 1986 he earned a degree in history and aesthetics from the Faculty of Humanities at ELTE. From 1987, he taught photography and moving image aesthetics, as well as autonomous photo design, at the Department of Visual Communication at the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, where he served as deputy department chair from 1993 to 1999. He was the editor of the contemporary art journal Szellemkép for fourteen years. Even as a high school student, he was deeply interested in art theory and equally sensitive to the aesthetic values of various visual media—painting, photography, and film. In contrast to the academic art theories of the twentieth century, he developed a vision of the nature of aesthetics that touches on mystical and transcendent aspects. The development and evolution of aesthetics can be brilliantly traced in his books. (Progressive Photo [1994], Tamás Kaposi [1996], Gergely Papp [1998], God’s Technicians [2006], The Poetry of Nothingness [2007], The Essential Form [2009], Aesthetic Essays [2010], The Aesthetics of the Essential Form [2017] video book).
(Source: https://imagofototanfolyam.hu/staff/miltenyi-tibor/)
About the Publisher
Established in 2016, Bone Idle is the publishing arm of one of the world’s most important private art collections, publishing uniquely conceived, beautifully produced and rigorous art, photography and creative non-fiction titles on a wide range of subjects. Bone Idle books draw on original research, making each one a definitive contribution to scholarship.
https://boneidlebooks.com/shop
(Source: https://boneidlebooks.com/about-bone-idle)
The Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation dedicated to the collection and preservation of vernacular photographs, objects, artefacts, curiosities, and ephemera. Founded in 1991, the archive began as a collection of photographs relating to war and conflict but has since expanded its remit to become the vast and thematically diverse repository it is today. They have produced and published over thirty books, often collaborating with photographers and artists such as Stephen Gill, Cristina de Middel, Thomas Mailaender, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, and Don McCullin.
https://archiveofmodernconflict.com
(Source: https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/about-us)
