FIAP HM in section Street for photography “Temptation”
ZORAN KOLARIĆ – EFIAP wrote about photography:
Mihály Lex “Temptation”
The dynamics of the relationship
Street photography, a photographic genre that from the very beginning of the creation of photography until today is one of the most interesting photographic genres; both for photographers and for admirers of photographic art.
One of the reasons for that are certainly the dynamics of the genre. Street photography is dynamic through and through: both the process of creating photographs, which requires the author to constantly move during the search for motifs, and the process of creating the photographic motif, are very dynamic in nature.
What, in its content sense, makes street photography interesting is the way in which the author of the photo manages to create relationships between individual elements of photography and contextually frame them.
If there are no relationships between elements or they are not successfully articulated, street photography is uninteresting, dead, and does not have a visual story that the observer of the photograph could read in a way that would leave him with a meaningful impression. Not only through its aesthetics but also, its content. Every photographer strives to make his photo visually beautiful, but street photography does not exist if there is no content or story.
The more present these relationships are, the more layered they are. The more they function on multiple levels, the more meaningful and high-quality the photo itself is.
Mihaly Lex, a successful photographer whose work I refer to today, is creating his own photographic mise-en-scène. Not just on one level, but many.
With an excellent shot and compositional framework, he creates relations of connection between elements based on juxtaposition as well as identity and attraction.
Thus, he creates relationships: of the living (man) – dead (statue), male-female, male and female breasts, positions of view, young and old, and dominant and submissive subject…
The photograph in question also very skillfully complements the genre of street photography by giving it added value by combining both elements of architectural photography (more precisely sculpture) and nude photography.
This photograph would work great if it were viewed in the genre of photographing architectural, sculptural artistic heritage, or nude photography.
Authors often reduce a particular genre to one element, recording only what has been seen and reducing it to a document (e.g., the beauty of a body or statue). The author’s photography begins when the author revives the context and creates dynamics by connecting elements. Thus, he leads the observer of the work to create associations based on his lived personal life experience and memories.
Mihaly Lex’s photo is a fine example of such a revival. A special mastery is that in this case the dynamics are created from completely static elements of photography.
The layering of the photo consists of three planes, indicated by compositional frames. The first is with a dominant statute of a woman framing a man in the background, and a window in the third plane that peeks voyeuristically from a hole in the bushes.
Thus, from the three elements of photography completely unrelated, and uninterested in each other, he masterfully created a functional whole that together forms a visual story.
The beauty of art, in this case of art photography, is when it indicates or encourages us to observe what is around us and within us that we ourselves do not notice. Especially when it is not aggressive, but unobtrusive, like in this photo. Through this photograph, the photographer reveals to us the beauty of the dynamics of relationships that we are sometimes not even aware of, in a spontaneous, masterfully observed and skilfully photographed moment stolen from time. We only become aware of the connection of everything around us through invisible relationships, when we figuratively bare ourselves.
Mihály told us a few words about himself:
I have been taking pictures for 12 years. I mainly take street pictures, because I am most interested in depicting people. I call it subjective documentary, because I try to bring as many emotions as possible into the picture, or to emphasize the emotional aspects of the given scene, with appropriate distance.
The pictures of Andre Kertész, Salgado, Koudelka had the greatest influence on me.
At the 2022 Hungarian Press Photo Contest, I won 1st place in the Social Portrayal Documentary Photo category with my series below. These pictures are the most characteristic of me. I like direct contact with people and photographing them during conversation, as if the picture becomes part of the conversation. The title and theme of the series: The world of old Pest apartment buildings – following a disappearing way of life.
