2010-09-11
Munkácsi's revolution (part 7 / 11)
The shining through of an uncredited artist
::::: Having Fun at Breakfast
When we look back, art will always appear as serious. Serious, monumental, something that was hard to achieve, like the metaphoric bell in Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. The truth is that the more we alienate a piece of art and the times around it the greater spectacle it'll be for the public of today. This will also mean that the more we can dig down to the birth of a piece of art the more likely we'll find it somewhat common (unless it involves a great deal of suffering, like Kierkegaard's brazen bull which Laszlo feLugossy contemporary painter and performance artist keeps referring to as to the anchor point of art and human nature). We who's present is the posterity to all arts that ever took place, we really like to think that art is a show that someone was once working really hard on just to entertain us now, just to reach to the future, just to survive in his or her work - for us. For we, people of holy present really represent a lot to those poor souls. Just think of poor Michelangelo working on his fresco in all that cold - in order to get it for us, fine people of his future, or think of poor Van Gogh who even lost a lobe while fighting with all those demons that now add a magnificent characteristic to the flavor of his art.
Yes, we have this fixation that art is our oil and that Dinos and vegetation once died for - in order to now provide us with this wonderful fluid. We have this fixation that we are the endusers - to all.
In such context it may be even more obvious why Having Fun at Breakfast is such an astonishing photo (with Tibor von Halmay and Vera Mahlke - Berlin 1931 or 1933 (?)) It's a rebel. It's not against something big or ugly though (like bad taste of middle class or conformism or the disinterest of society) it's just against seriousness, and only indirectly - simply ignoring the rule that one is supposed to be serious.
When we look at a photograph owing to our enduser state of mind we'll somehow imagine the moment of exposure as a sort of a serious one, or at least with some fair amount of solemnity. Having Fun at Breakfast is such a direct picture and it's totally not like this, no solemnity. It's a shock, out of the blue you'll be provoked to smile. A coffee had really perked him up, really thrown him up to his greatest surprise! He's just taking an other bite of his cake before taking the next sip of coffee and he'll find himself thrown up to the air, to the wall. It's so elementarily humorous like watching someone fall on his bottom in a silent movie. He looks like he had just been sitting - and then thrown. like popped. You just can't help smiling.
Till up to 2007 we only knew this one and another from this photo shoot - the one with white backdrop from the F. C. Gundlach collection, and we knew this as "The Dance Team of Tibor von Halmay and Eva Sylt, ca. 1931" (while Having Fun at Breakfast had Tibor von Halmay and Vera Mahlke). So these two pictures appeared somewhat separate - also because there were other known Munkacsi pictures having dancers, dance-duos jumping (like one with Rosi Barsony from ca. 1932 and another one called dance in Berlin ca. 1933).
Still it was obvious that Eva Sylt = Vera Mahlke (or they are twins happened to be in Munkacsi's studio at the same photo shoot, or Vera Mahlke is the name that Eva Sylt later took). It's important to see these tow pictures together cause like this we can see two sides of the same photoshoot, one being the creation of a professional portrait of a dance duo with plain white background, and one being a really funny editorial photograph - created with extreme professionalism (which by the way includes that he even left a light stand in the frame which indicates that by the time of exposure he was already aware how he'd crop the image).
Today since the 2007 big eBay find it's multiple times confirmed that it's the same photo shoot where originally they were doing those professional portraits (see pictures at ICP.org here). Having Fun at Breakfast is a side-product of this photo shoot which really tells us a lot about Munkacsi.
Just imagine having a morning photo shoot with lots of laughters and lots of jumpings. The dancers must have given quite a show for the photographer and his assistant (see here: link ). Later on in a coffee-break they are just waiting and talking - joking keeping up to the high fun-level of the whole morning (one will imagine this photo shoot take place in the morning, like 9 o' clock, which must have been a little early for the dancers). Then someone makes a joke on the coffee hopefully throwing them up (probably Tibor) - and they laugh. And possibly there came the moment that shows a little bit of how Munkacsi thought and worked. He must have liked the joke and probably went for it. So far the dancers had been the main attraction of the morning, and Munkacsi was serving their art professionally, but now he came up with the idea to actually take that picture that they were having so much fun joking about. Now the spotlight moves over on Munkacsi - the magician. Before the dancers finish up with their espresso Munkacsi and his assistant redirect the main light which is turned off in the break-time (and so this change is not that noticeable at that moment yet). Then after the coffee the master of photography turns on the lights and seconds later they're already doing the first shot. They'll do a few more too - because Munkacsi doesn't want to cut off of the girl while following Tibor's flight thru the now hand-held camera trying to have Tibor in the picture who's jumping really high after the coffee. The picture would be done before they could notice, and after they'd feel as if just after a nice series of laughter - except that now there'd be a few exposed plates - one of which would probably have some remarkable picture of this fun.
This is not only a playful act from a professional, but also a moment typical of Martin Munkacsi, showing how a photo shoot would unfold from the original plans, how he'd improvise and escalate, and how elegantly and swiftly he'd make even just freshly dreamt images come true. A true magician with full his powers. This is where revolution starts. When imagination is unlimited and creativity will be able to keep pace with it. This picture is like a sound recording could be of Mozart's playing the klavier. The playful virtuoso master at "work" - in the middest of playing.
We can also notice the direction in which Munkacsi took the turn while escalating the course of the photo shoot: he was turning away from the plain white backdrop towards a 'real' background, and simplified lighting too, just as if morning sun shone in thru the window - directly. Also the model girl (Eva Sylt / Vera Mahlke), while she was obviously master of making faces and poses now she ended up having a coffee and a cookie and zero poses which is really typical for Munkacsi's 'seductive' style, which could be described like instead of letting the model show whatever s/he wants he'll rather catch them doing something, rather let them, allow them, suggestively seduce them into a situation to do something which he'll catch them at, which he'll capture. This is actually against advertising photography - but "typical" for ingenious photography let it be even advertising photography ...
(thinking of Tom DiCillo's classic photo shoot in The Real Blonde were even an advertising photographer will be seeking and capturing drama or some great moment in which the model could be captured in even the abstract sense of this expression;
or we can think of the ingenious Anton Corbijn's Björk ever so unique and original portrait (not that you couldn't pick any of Corbijn's photographs), or the portrait of Peter Gabriel "captured" - caught on coming out from an adult video store)
When we think of Munkacsi's wonderful "think while you shoot" motto we should actually think
of a great artist running his mind and imagination at full speed parallel to reality, parallel to what's just happening and looking at everything from the reality of the future that is when the magazine has come out having the picture of the present photo shoot. We should think of an intense working of a beautiful mind's, a beautiful artist's alert and keen but somewhat undercover openness seeking the way at full throttle to capture the best possible picture of the moment, like an agent in a super-intense searching mode sent back from the future when the magazine have just come out, representing the hungry curiosity of the future reader (viewer) now - at the shooting.
Having Fun at a Morning Photo Shoot - that is turning playful imagination into reality before it could even start loosing its original spontaneity, and cherishing open and sincere state of human mind which even involves childish humor.
Advertising industry only acts as if it was playful, in fact it's quite rigid and expects talent to overcome this rigidity. Martin Munkacsi was a perfect choice: master of photography and master of artistic creativity in a totally bright and unconventional thinking and working style. He was to photography like fresh air. Like brand new beauty, like revolution.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Photographs linked and/or appearing in this article belong to Ullstein Verlag (Ullstein Bild) (Munkacsi's Berliner period), to the Harper's Bazaar and ICP.org (International Center of Photography) and F.C. Gundlach respectively.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
következő fejezet: the counter-revolution
a cikk fejezetei:
-JP-
2010-09-11