From Archive to History | Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

The BUDAPEST PHOTO FESTIVAL and MŰCSARNOK present a special selection from the collection of the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. The opening exhibition of Budapest Photo Festival’s 5th edition features a detailed picture of the 20th century history of photography with 71 photographs by 41 photographers.

Martin MUNKÁCSI
Akt napernyővel, Harper’s Bazaar, 1935. július, zselatinos ezüst nagyítás, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York ©Estate of Martin Munkácsi

Anne Morin, the curator of the exhibition, director of diChroma Photography, was led to the New York gallery by her interest in photographic history archives. In her personal selection from the archives of the world-famous gallery, the Budapest audience can see excellent images of the most significant artists of 20th century photography, both familiar and rarely seen. Among the iconic names are, among others Berenice Abbott, Araki, John Heartfield, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Allen Ginsberg, Helmut Newton and Man Ray, and also world-famous photographers of Hungarian descent, including André Kertész, Robert Capa and Martin Munkácsi.

From Archive to History

„A photographic archive is essentially a form, a typology, and sensitivity. The only way such an archive can be managed is if everything conforms to a clear and logical order, the specificities of which are established by the person who instils and orchestrates the dialectical movements that inhabit it.

Howard Greenberg is a luminary on the international photographic scene. He has been a gallerist for nearly 40 years and involved in the development of a considerable number of private collections throughout that time. The archive in his New York City gallery contains nearly 30,000 prints by the greatest names in 20th-century photography – photographers who have helped shape our gaze and created a collective imagery and a very personal imagination.

This archive tells a thousand stories and includes as many figures as there are eyes to contemplate it. It contains all possibilities. Each image is the beginning of a story, and a portrait of the person recounting it.

The exhibition-collection we are presenting has come together slightly in the manner of an exquisite corpse (cadavre exquis), the literary game invented by the Surrealists, Jacques Prévert and Yves Tanguy and which Georges Bataille described as “the most perfect illustration of the mind.” One after the other, the images are juxtaposed. Sometimes they contradict each other; sometimes they embrace or gaze at each other. They end up forming what André Malraux called a musée imaginaire (imaginary museum), because each one of them, through the presence of the others, metamorphoses and, together, they tell us a different story.

Berenice Abbott, Araki, Lillian Bassman, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Martin Munkácsi and Man Ray are all part of the game, each providing a “subject, a verb, or a compliment” and creating a new angle on the history of 20th century photography. „

– Anne Morin – Curator

Curator: Anne MORIN, DiChroma Photography

Curatorassistant: TULIPÁN Zsuzsanna

Műcsarnok

1146 Budapest, Dózsa György út 37.

Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday: 10.00 – 18.00