The Pajta Gallery’s 25th year

Motto:
„Hence a picture is not just a blink of light, to be forgotten immediately, it is also an experience. Its source is not in that which is real, but in what is imaginable. The imaginable picture is in no way lesser than a well thought through idea.” - Sándor Csoóri

In 1989 the whole world celebrated the 150th anniversary of photography. Maybe that is why the Hungarian Photographic Society was so shocked when the Gallery of Photographic Art on Vaci Street was closed down at short notice. This meant a huge loss for the profession in its cause of acquainting home-grown and international talent with each other. Serious international interest was shown in the work of my peers, and of the younger generation, precisely thanks to the activity of the gallery, where, under the direction of Mihály Gere, the many different forms of the art of photography were displayed in one place. 
Here we need to recall the terminology of John Szarkowski. According to him, there are two kinds of photography: windows and mirrors. The first group includes portraits, social, documentary and nature photography. Experimental photography falls into the mirror group: those who take a theme from the wider world and bring it into existence in its own independent, smaller world. The artist photographer Peter Timar had a similar concept when, as the secretary of the MFSZ (Hungarian Photographic Society), he devised and created a system within the society for creative groups. This is how the First Creative Group was formed in 1990, initially led jointly by Peter Timar and Professor László Beke, and then, for the next decade, by me.

When I was awarded the Kodak prize in 1991 in Dusseldorf, I decided that I would create a gallery in the barn belonging to my property in Salföld, in the Kali Basin, in order to lessen the blow felt from the closure of the Gallery of Photographic Art. Founded in June 1991, the Pajta Gallery operates to this day – and celebrates its silver jubilee this year. For several years now, I have lived in this village, along with numerous other artists, and, summer and winter, we are open to those interested in photographic art. The collection exhibited in the gallery shows the work of sixty Hungarian creators of mirror photography: over one hundred pictures are on display, all from the period of the past sixty years. Three years ago I established the Kálmán Gábos memorial room where, in memory of my deceased friend, a variety of camera-oriented exhibitions are organised. Here I spend the autumn of my years endeavouring, in these wonderful surroundings, to transfer a good few unfinished photographs onto a silver-based medium.

Final word: „If I knew why I take photographs, I would have no need of a camera.”

László Török Artist photographer