The crowds flow on the streets, narrow paths open and close between arms, legs, backs and fronts. The world bathes in sparkling lights, colors explode, blaring reds, vibrant greens, blues fighting ambitiously with the sky, pinks moving to the foreground. Clothes stick to bodies, the lyocell tightens, the viscose stretches, flounce sleeved poplins sprawl. Makeups melt or collect en masse in wrinkles, larges pores on loose cheeks, pouty lips and faces so smooth and spotless as if they were carved out of marble. Hairs are sloppy, thin, neatly smoothed, made into buns, fluttering in the wind in chestnut and bleach blonde colors. The weather is unbearably hot or freezing cold, but the sun is always shining brightly.
There is a casting on the street, actors come and go, some slowly stumble carrying weights, others lightly amble along. Those who are busy, hurry, those who aren’t, stop. Protesting or littering, standing guard or strolling babies, sleeping on benches or changing the world. They are wealthy with 3 Airbnbs or they have nothing, no real estate, things to do or things to lose. They wander the streets endlessly, time standing still. Certain looks are pin-sharp with tension vibrating, others are fluid, dreamy, hesitant. Some know their part in advance, others have no idea what’s in store for them. Cut-out stills, drawn reality – the pictures of Miklós Gulyás.
The photographer is roaming the streets of Budapest since the 1980’s. He feels its rhythm, palpating its arteries with steady hands. Houses and plasterwork crumble before his eyes, trees are planted and cut down, hot asphalt is laid down just to be broken by jackhammers later. Periods, eras, time horizons follow each other, but he keeps on recording his own subjective reality with sensitive eyes.
He was among the firsts to come out as a photographer from the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, arriving to a vast space, eager to find his way. He took a brief detour to the Hungarian Telegraphic Office (MTI) where they wanted to make a sports photographer out of him. It wasn’t to his liking. He could also have been a photojournalist but the expectations of the state news agency in the last hours of socialism didn’t quite match his interests either. He eventually committed himself to teaching, jumpstarting the career of many generations.
In his photography, he searched for autonomous paths right from the beginning. Photojournalism proved to be too strict of a framework, he strived to find the visual constellations that matched his feelings the best. He doesn’t believe in realistic portrayals, he doesn’t identify his images with reality, although they are definitely drawn from it. He pays immaculate attention to locations, spaces, architectural elements, but these all provide onlybackgrounds for the chosen subjects, gestures and expressions. Subjects on his photographs are “actors” and he is the “director”, deciding about different characters. He does not create a narrative for the pictures, although by looking at the images, we can still dive deep into the atmosphere of the given places. Typical locations include the Örs Vezér square, the racetracks, the Széchenyi bath, the Keleti Railway Station, the city centre and the outskirts as well. His photographs are social commentaries, but not judgmental: he runs through the illuminated stills of reality before him as a form of self-therapy. The camera is an intermediary between his curious, sensitive personality and the nuanced, multifaceted world, it lets him see and to be seen.
Katalin Kopin