Seven Reasons for Photographers’ Wanderings
By Lucia Almášiová, curator of the modern and contemporary art collections
Introduction
Photography as a visual medium has been writing its history officially since August 19, 1839, when daguerreotype of the French inventors Louis J. M. Daguerre and Joseph N. Niépce was officially presented at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Due to the broad-mindedness of the French government, the invention was handed over to the world a few months later. At the same time, the English inventor William H. F. Talbot tried to gain recognition for his invention of salt process on paper. However, he was not granted patent until 1841. Today, in addition to the most frequently mentioned “fathers of photography”, we know about some other pioneers of photography in this period who worked on a similar invention. But their designs did not come into practice for various reasons.
The first two decades of the development of photography were mainly a “search” period. New information was exchanged and disseminated, various improvements were sought and tested. The possibilities of the medium and its use in various areas of life were explored, especially its commercial and scientific use. In the commercial sphere, the new invention was initially regarded as a certain “curiosity” close to panoramas, dioramas and similar optical performances presented by wandering artists on their travels in Europe. Gradually, however, with the improvement of image quality and the method of adjusting small images, they gained more and more fans, including from the ranks of classical artists and middle and higher society. Later, after the emergence of new processes and standardized formats of cartes-de-visits and cabinet cards as well as collecting popular motifs, often only the photographs themselves traveled, in the form of consignments or through organized distribution as by books.
In the following text, we will present various examples of reasons for photographers’ travels in the period from the beginning of photography to the middle of the 20th century — associated with our territory — whether willingly, for better job opportunities and specific topics, or forcibly, most often for political and ethnic reasons. We will also look whether our people in foreign countries did well and whether foreigners were interested in working and living in our country. It is because relocating from one place to another, modernly speaking — migration, has been and still is a permanent part of the visual arts, and it applies to photography as well.
1. Come Closer! You Haven’t Seen that Before.
After the first reports and more detailed descriptions of the new invention, many were curious also about the true form of the daguerreotypes. In Vienna as the center of the monarchy, near Pressburg (also Poszony, currently Bratislava), the first samples were exhibited semi-publicly at the Academy of Fine Arts as early as at the end of August 1839. In the Czech lands, the first original daguerreotypes appeared in October 1839 in two bookstores in Prague. In the center of the Hungarian part of the monarchy, the artistic and non-professional public were first able to see daguerreotypes at the first exhibitions of the Pest Art Association in 1840 and 1841. These two cities, Vienna and Pest became the main mediators of a new discovery for Upper Hungary (currently Slovakia).
The first daguerreotypist in Pressburg came from the “Waldstein Optical Institute” in Vienna in September 1842. He attracted potential applicants: “Anyone who doesn´t yet know this art, may come to see for himself. “ He offered customers individual or group portraits or making pictures of buildings or landscapes. We don´t yet know, who exactly that daguerreotypist was. It might have been Arnold Waldstein (1787–1853), the founder of an optics company in Munich and the owner of a successful branch and a glass lens factory in Vienna since 1838. Or his son Jacob Waldstein (1810–1876), who took an active part in the running of the company and later, after his father’s death, successfully continued to run it himself. Neither are we certain, whether any “Waldstein’s” dagerotypes actually originated at that time in Pressburg. So far, the only clue to his presence are advertisements in the local newspaper Pressburger Zeitung.
Another town in Upper Hungary, where a daguerreotypist from Vienna appeared in the early 1840s, was Košice. This photographer was the painter and sculptor Wilhelm Berg (1807/1811–1872) from Vienna, later known mainly for his small wax sculptures (German: Wachsbossierung). According to a well-preserved advertising leaflet, he stayed in Košice for only a few days in 1843. In addition to praising his own work in advertisements (typical for this period), he also tried to attract customers to the exhibited samples of daguereotypes.
From Pest, the second center of the monarchy, a Hungarian painter of Italian origin Jakab Marastoni (1804–1860) came to Pressburg in the early 1840s. He came from Venice and studied painting in Rome. He had already worked in Pressburg as early as 1833 as a painter. But in April 1842 he came to Pressburg
for the first time as a dagerotypist on the occasion of the session of Hungarian Parliament there. He returned again in early June 1843 according to an announcement in the local newspaper Pannónia. This time the local newspaper reviewer spoke highly of the improved quality of his works and larger formats. He also reminded the public that Marastoni had exhibited several dagerotypes for public view. The last time he came to the city from Pest was in the Autumn 1843. Unfortunately, despite his considerable activity, no examples of his work have been preserved in our country.
2. I’m just Passing …
For the first years of the spreading of daguerreotypes (as a commercially more successful photographic process compared to the first types of photography on paper) were typical so-called traveling photographers. They were mostly former painters, draftsmen or creators of other small works of art who saw some business potential in dagguerreotypes and tried to bring it to new places. Most of the traveling photographers took turns in only a few places, but there were also those who actually traveled across whole Europe.
The Weninger brothers, originally from Steyer in Austria, were one of the first truly great traveling photographers. The older of them, Joseph Weninger (1802 -?) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna in 1826 and initially worked as a traveling painter of portrait miniatures. During his stay in Karlove Vary in June 1841, he met the Austrian pioneer of photography Anton Georg Martin, who taught him the process of daguerretype. Then, at the beginning of September, he traveled from Karlovy Vary to Prague, where he began offering daguerreotypical portraits for the first time. At the beginning of January 1842 he started working in Leipzig, in March he traveled to Dresden and in the second half of April to Hamburg. At the beginning of May 1842, he made his way through the cities of Alton and Kiel to Copenhagen, where he remained for a long time. In the summer of 1843, he met his younger brother Heinrich (1807–1875), who also worked as a traveling photographer, in Stockholm. Together they went to St. Petersburg in Russia, where they both ran a successful portrait studio until 1857. Regarding “Josef Weninger”, some older Czech literature (unfortunately without references) also informed about his stay in Mariánské Lázně, Brno, Pressburg and then in Warsaw and Krakow in Poland. In this case, however, there could be a confusion with the namesake of Josef Wilhelm Weninger from Prague, whose activities were recorded in Krakow from March to October 1851.
Another well-known traveling photographer was the Italian Carlo Naya (1816–1882). He originally studied law in Pisa, but thanks to his family affluence he was able to travel extensively in Europe and beyond. And it was during his travels in Europe that he was to meet with Daguerre’s new invention in Paris in approximately 1839. It seemed to enchant him so much that he decided to become a daguerreotypist. In the period from March to September 1844 he worked as a photographer in Prague and later also in Vienna. According to older Czech and Slovak literature, he offered his services in Pressburg in 1846 as well, but this has not yet been confirmed. Apparently, in that year he also opened a daguerreotype studio in Istanbul, and in 1854 and 1855 he was in Prague again. In 1857, he settled permanently in Venice and focus primarily on the photography of architecture, landscape and reproductions of works of art. He offered these pictures mainly to “tourists” from the ranks of the nobility and the wealthier bourgeoisie, who traveled to Italy as part of their cultural education. This is a probable channel by which Naya’s photographs in the SNG collections, originally probably from the property of the noble family of Zamoyský, got from Italy to Upper Hungary.
In 1847 a teacher of drawing and dagerotypist Johann Bubenik, probably from Prague, settled in Pressburg after his travels abroad for a few months for the first time. In his temporary studio on Windgasse (on Veterná Street, near Michalská Gate), he offered daguerreotype portraits, as well as daguerreotype devices from Viennese opticians Peter W. F. Voigtländer and Franz X. Waibl. Apparently, Eduard Kozics, later a well-known Pressburg photographer, bought equipment and learned daguerreotype from him. At the beginning of 1848, Bubeník sought a partner for a travel to Constantinople and Jerusalem through an advertisement. He planned the trip from March 1 of that year. He reappeared back in Pressburg in December 1850 at Spitalgasse (Špitálska Street) and stayed there only until March 1851. In 1852 he was already documented in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1854 in Graz, Austria and in the second half of the 1850s back in Bohemia.
3. Our Native in a Foreign City
The economic and cultural development of Upper Hungary’s cities was not ideal in the 19th century. So it was understandable that many talented and ambitious men often sought better opportunities in the larger centers of Central Europe.
A young student, Jozef Božetech Klemens (1817–1883), born in Liptovský Mikuláš, was one of the first dagerotypists who tried success in Prague in the early 1840s. He came to Prague in 1837 with the help of the Czech doctor and pedagogue Karel Slavoj Amerling. He recognized his artistic talent and helped him get to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. After the construction of Amerling’s private educational institute Budeč in Prague, in April 1842, Klemens opened Světloobrazárna (the Light Picture Gallery) in its garden, one of the first dagguerrotype studios in Prague. However, the studio was probably not successful, because in 1843 Klemens left Prague and went back to Upper Hungary. There, he continued to devote himself only to teaching and painting.
More successful than Klemens in Prague was young Josef Löwy (1835–1902) in Vienna in the 1850s. He came from Pressburg to the center of the monarchy in 1848 to learn lithography. At the same time, as a student, he attended a painting group at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In addition, he began to take photographs, initially only as an amateur, later professionally. In 1856 he opened his first indoor studio in Vienna. Three years later, he moved to a more prestigious address right in the center near the Stadtpark in Vienna. He gradually developed into one of the most important portrait photographer for Viennese society and became a respected figure in local photography circles. In addition to portraiture, he produced popular views of the city and its surroundings, as well as reproductions of works of art. In the early 1870s, he became involved in the developing industry of photomechanical reproduction and founded his own publishing house for image reproductions, which later gained an international reputation.
Brothers Ludwig Angerer and Viktor Angerer from Malacky who established themselves in Vienna from the 1860s, met with similar success. Older brother Ludwig Angerer (1827–1879) was innitially an army pharmacist, but he also devoted himself to photography as an amateur. Later he decided to become a professional photographer. He opened his first studio in Vienna with his army companion Hugo von Strassern in 1858, but later their paths diverged. Like Löwy, Ludwig Angerer became a sought-after portraitist for Viennese society, but his specialization soon became the documentation of art collections in collaboration with local museums. The younger brother Viktor Angerer (1839–1894) also had a military career first and later studied photography at his brother´s studio. In 1862 he founded his own one. At the beginning of the 1870’s, the brothers merged their companies because of Ludwig´s illness and Viktor took over the management of the business. In addition to portraits, Viktor specialized in production of city views and in photography for industrial purposes. He also documented various events related to the army. Like Löwy, he saw an opportunity in the new field of image reproduction and founded a successful lithographic and photomechanical workshop.
4. A Foreigner in Our City
On the other hand, Upper Hungarian towns sometimes attracted various foreigners who liked our country and decided to stay and carry out their photographic (and often in parallel also painting) activities there. The map of important and developed cities in the 19th century was a little different from the current situation. Except for Pressburg and Košice, the vibrant cities included Banská Štiavnica, Banská Bystrica, Liptovský Mikuláš or Turčiansky Svätý Martin.
A Nuremberg painter and graphic artist Georg Fleischmann (1821–1894) settled permanently in Pressburg as one of the first foreign artists and later photographers. He studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After his studies, he worked for some time in Vienna as a painter of oils, miniatures and watercolors. In 1856, he came to Pressburg and worked as a drawing and painting teacher at the local Catholic grammar school. In 1857 he opened a private painting and drawing school in his studio at Haynauplatz (currently SNP Square). He taught pupils from local middle-class families. At the same time, from 1858 he offered photographic portraits. It is not known for how long he was actively involved in photography. It is certain that since 1860 he has only been listed as a painter in the local directory. He enjoyed high regard as a portraitist and teacher for the rest of his life in Pressburg. He also took an active part in cultural events. For example, in 1877 he was one of the three artists who supported the establishment of the Pressburg Art Association.
Another foreigner who came to the city from a great distance and settled in Pressburg as a photographer was Louis Henri (? -?), originally from France. He opened his first temporary studio under Michael´s Gate in the garden of the house with the Pharmacy at the Red Crayfish sometime before May 1863. Later, he built a better glass studio following the American model, suitable for work in the winter, on this site. He offered his customers portraits in a new cartes-de-visite format. To introduce this format, he contacted the French inventor André Disdéri, as well photographer Ludwig Angerer, who was the first to introduce this format in nearby Vienna. As part of other services, he offered reproductions of daguerreotypes, graphics or oil paintings. For this purposes he also imported new photographic devices from Paris. At the end of 1865 he rented his next studio (at his new location at the “old post office”) to another photographer and, apparently, set out on travels. In 1866, however, the annual publication on Pressburg listed him again among the owners of five permanent photo studios in the town.
Based on research conducted hitherto, we know of few photographers from abroad who settled outside of Pressburg. One of the better documented photographer was Michal Faden (1865–1936), who probably came from Crakow. At the end of the 1880s, he began to take photographs at traditional August National Festivities in Turčiansky Svätý Martin. Later in approximately 1900 he established a permanent studio in Liptovský Mikuláš. His activities are documented by numerous portraits of Slovak national representatives and members of their families. They are now stored mostly in the collections of the Literary Archive of Slovak National Library in Martin. Since another photographer Gustáv Kráľ (Gusztav Kral) opened a portrait studio in the city at the same time, Faden probably decided to leave the city in c. 1905 after only a few years of activity. We can find the photographer with the identical surname Michael Faden, but of German origin, later in Brno, where his studio operated until the end of the interwar period.
5. To America
Photographic trade as a kind of profession was attractive to many, but it was one of the less reliable and secure. The interest of customers was sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. It much depended on the size of the city the photographer was located. Therefore, since the 1860s, many photographers tried to offer photographs with other motifs like city views, „celebrity” portraits popular for collectors or to collaborate with industrial and public institutions and provide them with documentation of their products, projects or important public events. For some photographers, however, the solution was to go to work somewhere far away, most often to North America or Canada.
One of such daredevils who went to try their luck overseas was the emigrant Kornél W. Beniczky (? — 1874), originally probably a military captain in Komárno. It is not certain when he exactly left the country, but in 1859, he was already registered as a daguerrotypist at Chatham 65 in New York and since 1864 at another New York address, New Chambers Street 2. According to old Hungarian literature, Beniczky’s studio was particularly popular among immigrants. They went to him to be portrayed in “their first American clothes”. He also helped them find work in a new country. The last time the address of his studio was published in the New York directory is the volume 1873–1875. Reportedly, he died in 1874. Since then, the Beniczky photographic studio was run by his wife Sarah, also a trained photographer, until the end of the 1880s.
In the second half of the 19th century, increasing Magyarization from Hungarian politicians and authorities added to the economic causes of migration from Upper Hungary. Magyarization was enforced in regulations and bans in the areas of economy, industry, trade, but also education and culture. In the Upper Hungary in particular, the use of the Slovak language has been suppressed strongly by the Hungarian authorities since the last third of the 19th century. Slovak schools were closed and activities for support of the Slovak nation were banned. In this context, the life story of the Slovak nationalist, ethnographer, collector and photographer Pavol Socháň (1862–1941) was remarkable. Pavol Socháň came from Vrbice near Liptovský Mikuláš and originally studied as a teacher in Lučenec. As he was nationally active, he was forbidden to continue his studies. Therefore, he went to study as a painter in Prague in 1881 and later in Munich from 1885 to 1886. There he met photography for the first time. At the same time, he began to work on Slovak ethnography research and to collecting Slovak material culture. His plan was to support the embroidery craft. He decided to publish illustrated pattern books — initially in lithography, later in photography. For this purpose, he underwent training in photography in the Prague studio of Jindřich Eckert. After obtaining an apprenticeship certificate, he settled in Martin in 1893 and opened a photographic studio. He portrayed local representatives and their families and issued ethnographic and landscape postcards. At the same time, he collaborated in creating Slovak Museum collections and wrote theatre plays. One of them, titled The Peasant Bride, premiered in 1909 in Martin, was marked by the Hungarian authorities as anti-Hungarian work and caused a turning point in his life. In 1912, due to growing problems with the authorities, he first went to Prague. Later, after the outbreak of World War I, to avoid the arrest, he emigrated to the United States. There, he worked as a teacher and editor of Slovak newspapers and magazines in New York and later in Pittsburgh. According to preserved sources of information, he also distributed his “Slovak” postcards here among compatriots. On the occasion of the organization of the Czechoslovak Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1917, he even prepared a lecture in which he was to screen slides with Slovak motifs. However, after his return home in 1919 to the new Czechoslovakia, he did not return to active photographing.
6. “Traditional” Slovakia
The last third of the 19th century was a period of intense national self-awareness and efforts for political independence for several Central European countries. Ethnographic documentation (also with the help of photography) was an important part of this process. It was believed that the people and their authentic culture and way of life were the basis for building a picture of national identity. At the same time, at the nostalgic end of the century and the growing feeling of the loss of the “olden days”, many felt the need to capture the traditional rural way of life, which was replaced by advancing modernization. In the Czech environment, the Jubilee Exhibition in 1891 and the Czechoslavik Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895 were fundamental stimuli for photographers oriented in this way. The second exhibition was also preceded by a targeted public call for works from professional and amateur photographers. The intention was to call them to collaborate on the exhibition and also help to create content for the future ethnographic photographic archive, similar to those created at the time in the Austrian and German environment.
This idea strongly influenced, for example, the Czech railway clerk Karel Dvořák (1859–1946), later a very influential figure in Czech amateur photography at the turn of the century. Dvořák began to be interested in photography during his stay in Louny in 1887. After his first photographic success at the exhibition in 1891 in Prague, he began to focus on ethnography topics for another exhibition. For this purpose, he organized a group of other amateurs around him in Louny. In 1897, already as an influential member of the Czech Club of Amateur Photographers, he founded the club of enthusiasts of lantern slides, in which he began to screen glass slides regularly at the club’s meetings and lectures. Since 1901 they were open to the public. He promoted this so-called “projection photography” as an important means of enlightenment, at the same time it was supposed to be an attractive social and national event. He sought motives for his ethnographic lectures in the traditional rural areas of Czechia, Moravia (Moravian Slovácko), and regularly in Slovakia, especially in the more easily accessible regions of Považie, Kysuce, Orava, Liptov and Tatras thanks to railway, but also further south in the Detva region. The themes of his pictures were views of towns and villages, work in the fields and at home, traditional celebratory costumes and everyday clothes, and the natural beauty of the landscape. Together with him as well as independently on amateur basis, but probably on the basis of the same stimuli, several other amateur photographers went to Slovakia to photograph the still preserved traditional way of life. We may name Stanislav Klíma (1878–1944), Dr. Karel Matoušek (1883–1964), Jan Plischke (1867–1917) and probably several others about whom we do not know so much today. Among licenced (professional) photographers, the photographer František Krátký (1851–1924) from the town of Kolín liked to travel to Slovakian regions in Upper Hungary to photograph rural life or beauty of the landscape, especially near High Tatras.
Another Czech photographer for whom Slovakia as a country became a topic and was willing to leave his home for it was a Czech folk musician and later a prominent interwar photographer and filmmaker Karel Plicka (1894–1987). Plicka originally studied as a teacher and at the same time he studied violin and singing. As a child, he was enchanted by the original Slovak folk music. He traveled to Slovakia for the first time in 1919 and he made his first collection of songs and melodies. He later used to return to Slovakia every holiday. After the resumption of the activities of Matica slovenská in Martin, he started to work for them and began his extensive collecting and research activities. Photography, which he has been involved in since his childhood, had become an integral part of his work. He photographed people singing, children having fun and games, women and men in traditional special occasion clothes and at work. He also photographed the beauty of the Slovak landscape. His initial intention was to create a photographic ethnographic document, but it soon turned into a very personal artistic statement about Slovakia. The emphasis was laid on the idealization of a country man, but also with a sense for poetry and lyricism of the motifs. A certain appreciation of the quality and character of his work was the fact that a selection of these pictures was published from 1924 to 1926 in a series of postcards for the public. In 1928 he exhibited his photographs from Slovakia for the first time in Košice and also compiled an original photographic album, currently in the SNG collections. Later in 1937 he published his first book monograph on Slovakia. Soon Plicka employed film in his ethnographic documentation, as it allowed him to record a more authentic movement while researching dancing or even the sound of songs. Slovakia, its people, country, culture and heritage became Plicka’s lifelong theme. Although he had to leave Slovakia at some moment, he later used to return there for his favourite motifs and themes.
7. “Slovakia belongs to the Slovaks!”
The year 1918 was a crucial moment for the history of the Slovak nation for gaining a certain independence. At the same time this year is considered a real turn of the 20th century, the real beginning of the modern 20th century. Although at first no one could have imagined that something as terrible as the First World War, then called the “Great War” could ever happen again, it happened and both events became major milestones in European and world history. In the 20th century, Slovakia’s own political and social history was turbulent, complex and often painful. And at the same time inseparably connected with the Czechoslovak history.
The interwar period in Czechoslovakia was a time of both challenging and enthusiastic building of a new common state. Especially on the Slovak side, it was a time of intensive development of the economy, education, culture and raising the overall standard of living of society. The activities of previously banned institutions (especially Matica slovenská) were renewed and new national and cultural institutions were established. One of the symbols of the progress was, for example, the School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava. Designed on the model of the German Bauhaus, it affiliated the most progressive visual artists and experts focused on design and arts and crafts. At the end of the 1930s the already mentioned Czech ethnographer, photographer and filmmaker Karel Plicka (1894–1987) ranked among them. He came to the school to teach in the newly established film department, for the management of which he clearly had the greatest experience at that time in Slovakia. He himself created the whole concept of teaching of the so-called kinetic photography and cinematography and he also taught everything himself. Plicka began to be interested in film in 1926 while working for Matica slovenská. Despite the initial problems related mainly to material equipment and finances in Matica, he very quickly evolved into an award-winning filmmaker. Already for one of his first Slovak films Po horách, po dolách (In the Mountains, in the Valleys) from 1929, he won the Gold Medal at the International Exhibition of Photographic Art in Florence (1932) and also the Gold Medal at the I. Biennale Cinematografica di Venezia (1932). His later film Zem spieva (The Land Sings) from 1933, created as a visual-musical symphony of the Slovak land and the traditional life of the people, was even more successful. He received the City Cup of Venice at II. Film Biennial for it. His influence as a professor of film since 1938 at school had promising prospects for building the basis for the future development of filmmaking in Slovakia. However, politics has strongly intervened in this plan. Upon the establishment of an independent Slovak State in 1939, all Czech professors and workshop teachers from the school were forced to leave Slovakia, including Plicka. This way also ended his long-term work for Matica slovenská. He went back to Prague, where he continued to work as a photographer and filmmaker in the field of monument protection and later as a professor at the Film Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. However, he did not bear grudges against Slovakia and he often revisited it after the World War II. He was involved in founding film and art organizations and he continued to photograph Slovakia for his book projects.
Another socially challenging moments in the history of Slovakia in connection with politics and war (this time the World War II) were the repatriation processes — the mutual exchange of the nationals among Slovakia and neighboring countries ordered by their governments after the end of the war. Repatriations affected large numbers of people in border areas, especially in the south. At very short notice, the selected residents had to pack their necessary possessions, arrive at the gathering place and be transported by trucks away from their former home to the “right side of the border”. There they had to start their lives anew. Even the licenced photographers of non-Slovak nationality did not avoid these processes.
A good example for us can be the story of the Bratislava´s (former Pressburg´s) photographer Béla Mindszenty (1874–1946), who originally came from Mohács in southern Hungary. He learned photography in Budapest in Károly Koller’s studio and on trips in Germany and France. In 1904 he came to Pressburg, where he took over the lease of an established studio of the photographer Ján Mailáth (under the management of his widow) situated near the town theater and the Notre Dame monastery. He ran the studio for several years as “Majláth’s successor”, later under his own name. In 1909, he rebuilt the studio into a more modern and luxurious one. He introduced electric light, a novelty at that time, which he used at the process of photographing. He offered his customers mainly portraits, but he also worked in documentary photography, event photography or the creation of tableau vivant (staged photographs based on historical figures and events). In addition to classic photographs, especially silver gelatin at the time, he also offered images in more artistically demanding processes of carbon printing, bromoil printing and gum bichromate printing. Over the years, he became a leading portraitist in the city. He was able to bring his studio essentially unchanged to the new era after the founding of Czechoslovakia, when Pressburg became Bratislava. In 1929, as a respected photographer, he participated in the founding of the amateur photography association Petzval Club. In 1937 he was elected honorary chairman of the Association of Photographers in Slovakia. A sudden turning point in his life did not come until the end of the war in 1945 in connection with repatriations. As a man of Hungarian nationality, he was “detained” and forcibly relocated to Hungary. His studio was looted by unknown persons in the autumn of 1945. Valuables were stolen and the interior was damaged. Subsequently, the studio was managed by several persons, including photographer Karol Aschner, a returning expatriated Slovak from Oradea, Romania, who originally owned a large studio there. Mindszenty, from Budapest, tried to obtain at least the remaining equipment from the studio. He eventually received approval from the authorities. However, at the end of 1947, only his wife Helena came to Bratislava to collect the items, as Béla Mindszenty had since died in Budapest. Despite its partial use by the Academy of Fine Arts in the following decades, the building in which the studio was located continued to fall into disrepair until it was in such a state that it had to be demolished in the early 1980s. Nowadays, only a replica stands in its place, in many respects inauthentic, and again it is disused and dilapidated.
Conclusion
The theme of wandering, more modern term “migration” (and within it “emigration” and “immigration”), is often misused to provoke controversy in society. However, history shows us that migration in various forms has always been here and not only in art. Society in the past seems to have managed to cope with it somehow better. Diversity of nationalities and languages in major centers and cities at crossroads was more common, same as greater openness and interest in the rest of the world. From the voluntary migration benefited not only the person but often the society around him or her. The base was probably mutual tolerance and respect, but also adaptation. On the contrary, forced departures and relocations, especially for political and ethnic reasons, often brought only painful consequences and losses for local culture, history and society.
The paper was created as part of a project called Inclusive Art and Culture, initiated by the SNG in 2021. The aim of this socially engaged project is to thematize and raise the profile of presently sensitive topics through the visual arts. We believe that the visual arts are the ideal platform for spreading the knowledge, encouraging a dialogue and bringing together the diverse cultures and communities in our country.
References:
Books, studies:
Birgus, Vladimír — Scheufler, Pavel: Česká fotografie v datech 1839–2019. Praha : Grada Publishing, 2021, pp. 12–13.
Eder, Josef Maria: History of Photography. New York : Columbia University Press, 1945, pp. 282–287, 290–291, 310–311, 706–707, 760–761.
Farkas, Zsusza: Festő — Fényképészek 1840–1880. Budapest : Magyar Fotográfiai Múzeum, 2005, pp. 19, 58–59, 62–77, 118.
Frank, Hans: Vom Zauber alter Licht-Bilder. Frühe Photographie in Österreich 1840–1860. Wien — München — Zürich — New York : Molden Edition, 1981, pp. 93–109.
Gröning, Maren — Faber, Monika: Inkunabeln einer neuen Zeit. Pioniere der Daguerreotypie in Österreich 1839–1850. Wien : Christian Brandstätter Verlag — Albertina, 2006, pp. 17–18.
Hlaváč, Ľudovít: Dejiny slovenskej fotografie. Martin : Osveta, 1989, pp. 13–113.
Hochreiter, Otto — Starl, Timm: Geschichte der Photographie in Österreich. Band 2. Bad Ischl, 1983, pp. 97, 149, 192.
Koday, Juraj: Photo Anno… Počiatky bratislavskej fotografie. Katalóg výstavy. Bratislava : ObKkASS, 1989, non-pagin.
Lesay, Rastislav: Replika Mindszentyho fotoateliéru v Bratislave. In: Projekt, roč. 38, 1996, č. 3, pp. 22–24.
Mojžišová, Iva: Škola moderného videnia. Bratislavská ŠUR 1928–1939. Bratislava : Artforum — Slovenské centrum dizajnu, 2013, pp. 70–73, 182–183, 188.
Paoli, Silvia: Carlo Naya. In: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Vol. 2. Ed. John Hannavy. New York : Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, p. 982.
Rusnáková, Kateřina: Brněnská živnostenská fotografie do roku 1948. Diplomová práce. Brno : MU, 2009, p. 76.
Rybárová, Kristína: Fotografické ateliéry v Košiciach od druhej polovice 19. storočia do roku 1918. In: Historica Carpatica, roč. 21, 1990, pp. 48–49.
Scheufler, Pavel: Galerie c. k. fotografů. Praha : Grada Publishing, 2001, pp. 139–141, 154–157, 176–178.
Skopec, Rudolf: Dějiny fotografie v obrazech od nejstarších dob k dnešku. Praha : Orbis, 1963, pp. 67–68, 322.
Skopec, Rudolf: Nález zaujímavého dokumentu. In: Ľudová tvorivosť, Vol. 2, 1962, č. 8, p. 379.
Slivka, Martin — Strelinger, Alexander: Pavol Socháň. Martin : Osveta, 1985.
Slovenský biografický slovník. 3. zväzok (K-L). Martin : Matica slovenská, 1989, pp. 97–98.
Slovenský biografický slovník. 4. zväzok (M-Q). Martin : Matica slovenská, 1990, pp. 485–487.
Slovenský biografický slovník. 5. zväzok (R-Š). Martin : Matica slovenská, 1992, pp. 308–309.
Starl, Tim: Lexikon zur Fotografie in Österreich 1839 bis 1945. Wien : Album, Verlag für Photographie, 2005, pp. 21–23, 298–299, 498, 508.
Steen, Uwe: Joseph und Heinrich Weninger. In: Fotogeschichte, roč. 18, 1998, č. 70, pp. 3–19.
Sources and archival materials:
Kornhuber, G. A.– Rakovszky, István — Szekcső, Tamás — Kanka, Károly — Rómer, Flóris: Pozsony és környéke. Pozsony : Nyomatott Wigand Károly Frigyesnél, 1865.
Pannonia, 1843
Pressburger Zeitung, 1847–1894
Pressburger Wegweiser, 1858–1889, 1904, 1913–1914
Statistische Nachweisungen über das Pressburger Comitat. Pressburg : Druck von Alois Schreiber. 1866.
Archív mesta Bratislavy, Fond hlavného likvidátora, fy Mindszenty
Archív mesta Bratislavy, Útvar hlavného architekta, fy Mindszenty
Online references:
Scheufler, Pavel: Bubennik Johann. Available at: http://www.scheufler.cz/cs-CZ/fotohistorie/fotografove,b,bubenik-johann,15.html
Beniczky, Kornel W. Available at: https://www.langdonroad.com/ben-to-bey
