Pictures and Pixels - Photographic Art and Beyond
National Salon 2016

Zsolt Péter Barta

PHOTOGRAPHER

1962

He worked as a freelance photographer from 1984, was a member of the Studio of Young Photographers between 1984– 1989, and joined the Hungarian Photographers’ Association in 1989. Between 1994–1999, he was artistic editor of the journal Fotó, and then of Fotográfia. He was awarded the Pécsi József Scholarship between 1991– 1994, the scholarship of the Hungarian Academy in Rome in 1993, and the André Kertész Scholarship in 1996. In 2010 he won the Balogh Rudolf Prize. He has taken part at a number of solo and group exhibitions in Hungary and Europe, and his works can be found in Hungarian, French and American public and private collections. His writings on art have appeared in diverse professional journals.

Storm, excerpts from the series (in memoriam István Szőts)

2012
40 × 60 cm | giclée print on Baryta Canson paper

Storm
In memoriam film maker István Szőts

The series I call Storm is not a document of a storm.
The photos stand at the intersection of several themes. The subject of the storm links the series to the German Sturm und Drang movement, and is in itself pregnant with a strong dramatic quality, a charge of passions and emotions. The pictures also share characteristics with the expressive solutions in the landscape dramaturgy of film director István Szőts, to whose memory I dedicate the series. At the same time, I put the night sensitivity, the “night vision,” of my digital camera to the test in the pitch dark, so that the photos could be made in contrast to “ready-made programming” (Flusser). What the resulting photos, which one could call minimalist, bear witness to is not overflowing rage, however, but some quiet, understated contemplation, and the tension between the two.

Storm, excerpts from the series (in memoriam István Szőts)
Storm, excerpts from the series (in memoriam István Szőts)