Two distinct photographic series by István Jávor are being presented in a concurrent exhibition on the street level of FUGA and in the Elemér Zalotay Hall located below.
As the still photographer for Pál Schiffer’s documentary *Gyuri Cséplő*, Jávor took photographs in Németfalu, Zala County, in 1975, and some of these, having “awakened from Sleeping Beauty’s slumber,” unexpectedly resurfaced 51 years later from the Hungarian National Film Archive’s Photo Collection, thus becoming visible once again.
On the occasion of the film’s 1978 premiere, Jávor organized a small exhibition at the Pushkin Cinema, where he placed 10 of what he considered his best giant slides in two one-meter-tall, double-walled, internally illuminated Plexiglas cubes, suspended from the ceiling of the cinema’s lobby. Then, a few days later, as the cinema’s program changed, the cubes were taken down, and the images inside them vanished from view. Thanks to a stroke of luck, they can now be viewed again—at a different time, in a different place, in a different way.
A defining event in István Jávor’s private life can be seen as the precursor to his other photo series. The impact this event had on him fundamentally changed his personality and worldview. And it is largely due to this that, in August 1980, he set out for Transylvania together with lawyer-sociologist Ildi Bakcsi, art historian Kati S. Nagy, and ethnographer Péter Szuhay to show people back home what daily life was like there.
Although he set out as a reporter to document a world unknown to him, his personal experiences transformed him into a storyteller who conveyed humanistic images. For more than five years, this first journey was followed by many others, on which his constant companion was Jóska Kőrösi—a poet, theater director, and, in terms of his livelihood, a telegram deliveryman. He knew everyone.
The photographs Jávor created on these journeys do not allow viewers to remain detached, merely observing the images. The deep emotions evoked by the last bite of food offered to him, and the hospitality flowing toward him and his traveling companions, permeate his images so thoroughly that the sincere openness of the environment that welcomed him with genuine trust radiates even to viewers decades later.
And can a photographer do more than this—to almost disappear, so that his presence does not stand between the scene, the people, the stories visible in the image, and the viewer? To guide the viewer’s gaze through space and time, thereby breaking down their structure, and transforming the “there and then” into a continuous present? With an almost imperceptible presence, he preserves gazes, situations, and lives, allowing the weight of the inevitability inherent in all things to gently weave itself into his images, while presenting the absurdity of reality as a natural part of life.