Munkácsi's revolution (part 11 / 11)

::::: original sources, great readings

This article is not a product of an original research but instead an interpretation of all that you can read about Martin Munkacsi. That "all" however is not that many sources, there's really just a few original writings about Martin Munkacsi. The list is short but beautiful, it's F.C. Gundlach who as a fashion photographer himself discovered Munkacsi (in the 1970's) and went to find out all about his life and work - including collecting his pictures and collecting facts and stories from original sources. Whatever we read now about Munkacsi comes almost definitely from F.C. Goundlach and from his research. F.C. Gundlach is committed to saving all the great remnants of analogue photography today when a big change is taking place and traditional, non-digital photography is becoming past and forgotten very quickly, just like vanishing. F.C. Gundlach's primary target for saving has been Martin Munkacsi and history of art and photography can't thank him enough for discovering this brilliant and forgotten artist and getting his work back from oblivion.

We Hungarians can be especially proud of a great biographer and historian of photography, Károly Kincses who's book on Martin Munkacsi (1996) is also fundamental opening a new base for any researchers to come (collecting an extreme amount of memories from Hungarian sources that would have been simply unavailable for others who don't have access to Hungarian Language. He also interviewed Joan Munkacsi, the basic source to any research. Besides collecting Károly Kincses did quite a critical sorting of memories too, adding notes to and labeling them regarding their credibility.

The main resource is however F.C. Gundlach's great album-book, published by Steidl (2006) with the association of author Klaus Honnef and Enno Kaufhold (for details see here at Amazon.com).

Searching the web for Martin Munkacsi you'll definitely find lot's of texts based on Susan Morgan's Munkacsi biography (1992) (see here at amazon.com) which is also an original one, also based on interview with Joan Munkacsi - however some mistakes are obvious, owing to the fact that Joan Munkacsi was a little girl at that time that she's reaching back to.

There's the Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography (2006), of course, that has references to Martin Munkacsi at the chapter -Fashion Photography (of course) by Peter le Grand, and of course a dedicated Martin Munkacsi chapter - by Susan Morgan.

It's these works that serve as a basis to practically anything that one will find on the internet or printed - including our article here, of course. there's no more sources left, nobody who lives and Mr. Gundlach haven't spoken to. So, that is it - for the sources.

One can only gratefully thank these beautiful minds, Mr. Gundlach, his younger associate Sebastian Fox, Károly Kincses for making it possible for us, for everyone to make a contact to Munkacsi's art and person ...



Peter Josvai

any kind of feedback is gratefully welcome, of course

http://www.facebook.com%2Fpeter.josvai

• an uncredited artist
• being the best paid photographer of the world
• the pioneer and the "newcomers"
• Munkacsi's revolution : addiction & penetration to reality
• Potsdam 1933
• Munkacsi's festive style
• Having Fun at Breakfast
• the counter-revolution
• the road to oblivion
• finally: shining through
• original sources, great readings