THE WAY THINGS STAND – ZSOLT OLAF SZAMÓDY’S RETROSPECTIVE PHOTO EXHIBITION
Hungarian Museum of Photography
6000 Kecskemét, Katona József tér 12.
fotomuzeum.hu
20 October 2021 – 9 January 2022

Opening:
19 October 2021, 5 PM
Opening speech by:
Tibor Wehner
©
Zsolt Olaf Szamódy: Trio, from the Coast series, 1991, gelatin silver print, 40 × 50 cm

Constantly growing and increasingly complex, Tatabánya artist Zsolt Olaf Szamódy’s oeuvre is marked by a technical versatility and a willingness to vary practical solutions. Different genres and themes form focal points in a career of three decades. He set out with colour landscapes and still lifes, before starting a socially conscious project that recorded the existence and decay of the remnants of Tatabánya’s industry, the increasingly rare scenes of work and life in the mining region. He went on to create a lyrical, conceptual photographic etude that probed the traces of the Old Lake in Tata, and after 2000, an extensive series of sea and coastal views that overwrite our ideals and memories of the Adriatic. Szamódy’s oeuvre also includes photos that concentrate on small phenomena, and reportage-style pictures of distant lands, regions and cities we find exotic. And on top of all this, there is a massive, very important group, hundreds of photos based on a definite concept, a monumental series that can be considered an emblem of the oeuvre: with Fort Monostor near Komárom, what could be called the architectural chapter of his work, Szamódy explores a structure whose story spans periods. (Tibor Wehner)

Kurátor / curator: BAKI Péter

This exhibition is supported by the National Cultural Fund.