This is a limited edition book of two hundred copies.
This copy is 184/200.

„The amazing book of vernacular photography from the Fortepan archive is back from printers. One of the most astonishing photography books I have ever seen”
András Szántó, curator
New York

Fortepan Masters is a photographic album, which includes the most remarkable images from the collection of Fortepan, the most significant modern Hungarian online photographic archive. Photographer Szabolcs Barakonyi who has been editing thematic selections of photographs from Fortepan’s compilation for years has embarked on selecting with a keen eye 330 that he regards as the best and most exciting from the collection of more than a hundred thousand images, in such a way that the internal nature of the photographs would freely unfold. His selection highlights the poetry in the pictures, their artistic value, the “fine art” so far hidden in this enormous archive. His principle of selection did not involve enforcing historical or thematic viewpoints, but finding outstanding photographs excelling in their beauty, purity, aesthetic significance, and sorting them without any thematic obligation. The end result is a subjective selection compiled with an expert’s eye. The book is a pioneering undertaking connected to the latest trends in photography: via the conception of private photography and online archives, it presents an exceptional collection of pre-digital photography.

The book is an original experiment whereby an international brand of photography is created on the basis of a so-called “crowdsourced” archive, a work of collective authors. It is as if the so-far hidden heritage of a formerly unknown photographer of international standing was presented to the world – yet the author is the collective self of several hundred, mostly non-professional photographers.

Fortepan Masters represents an opportunity by means of which Hungary can present itself on the international cultural market as never before. The 20th century photographs published in the book present the historical and cultural heritage of Hungarian society’s everyday life, as well as the roots of Hungarian photographic thinking which exists in private photography and is linked to world heritage.

Fortepan Masters was on the shortlist of Les Rencontres de la Photographie's 2022 Book Awards with 14 other excellent books in the historical book category and won the Hungarian Design Award 2022 in the Visual Communication category. In 2022 we also received the Mihály Gera award – the award is for an outstanding album presenting the most beautiful pictures by Hungarian or international authors, created in the past five years.

The nearly seven hundred-page photo book Fortepan Masters – Collected Photography in the 20th Century – Selected by Szabolcs Barakonyi, inspired by the archives of Fortepan contains 333 Fortepan images. The images in this publication are not based on narratives and do not follow a thematic or chronological system, but rather the fine art and visual aspects dominated the selection and arrangement. The image stream is not broken by captions, we find relatively little text in the book.

Levehető, hajtható könyvtáblában.

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