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Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Finalists, Esteemed Members of the Jury,

In November 1932, a nineteen-year-old boy from Budapest entered a lecture hall in Copenhagen, where Leon Trotsky was addressing a gathering of Danish students. Cameras were not permitted, but the young man took his chances. The photographs he made that day became Robert Capa’s first published images. Ever since, the history of photography has been shaped, time and again, by people willing to make the effort to venture out into the world, to get to know others, and to reveal something we might otherwise never have noticed.

Today, when artificial intelligence can generate almost any image imaginable, the question of what makes a photograph authentic has become particularly important. World Press Photo recently reaffirmed in its rules a fundamental principle: a photograph is a trace of a moment that actually occurred. An artificially generated image shows us what we have imagined; a photograph, by contrast, may reveal details we could never have anticipated. This is precisely what makes photography so compelling: photographers do not merely show us what they see. Sometimes, they discover something they themselves had not previously noticed.

I spent thirty years working in museums as a curator and ethnographer. The ethnographer’s approach has much in common with that of the documentary photographer: observing, recording, participating and living alongside a community. Long-term ethnographic fieldwork is a fundamental research method in cultural anthropology and ethnography. It involves researchers living within the community they are studying for an extended period — months, sometimes even years — sharing in the rhythms and routines of everyday life. In the work of this year’s finalists, I recognised precisely this sense of living and breathing alongside others.

Someone who sets out from Kerecsend to visit a hundred village pubs — like an ethnographer — or spends eight years following religious pilgrimages and festivals from Csíksomlyó to Máriapócs — again, like an ethnographer — is doing far more than taking photographs. They meet people, return to them, learn the rhythms of particular places and gradually gain insights that would remain inaccessible during a single visit. It is this presence, attentiveness and trust that allow photographs not simply to show us something of the world, but to bring us closer to it. We are gathered here today to recognise precisely this achievement, and it gives me particular pleasure to welcome you all.

I am genuinely proud of the work of this year’s five finalists.

John Berger once observed, with some bitterness, that the camera records in order that we may forget. The five projects presented here set out to do precisely the opposite: to preserve what might otherwise gradually disappear from our collective memory. Noémi Napsugár Melegh makes the experience of personal grief tangible; Viktor Váradi explores the passage of time through family photographic archives; Zsófia Sivák documents the everyday world of rural pubs; Zsófia Pályi portrays communities shaped by the interplay of faith and everyday life at religious pilgrimages and festivals; while Zsolt Balázs and Gábor Sióréti preserve the diverse, often conflicting experiences of people living along Hungary’s southern border. These are stories without which our shared memory would be poorer. For this, we owe all five artists a debt of gratitude.

For such stories not only to be created but also to reach a wider audience, initiatives such as the Robert Capa Photography Grand Prize Hungary are essential. When the prize was established in 2014, its founders recognised a significant gap: between the support available to emerging artists and the recognition accorded to established bodies of work, many years of sustained creative endeavour too often pass with little attention.

I would particularly like to thank the Capa Center for its decision last year to carry the prize forward despite the financial difficulties it faced. I am also grateful to Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, which will present an exhibition of the Grand Prize winner’s work next year and provide an opportunity for a month of dedicated artistic work. This is an important step towards bringing the work of Hungarian photographers to international audiences.

My thanks go to David Campany, Chair of the Jury, for bringing Cornell Capa’s vision of concerned photography to Budapest, and to every member of the jury for their thoughtful and attentive work. I would also like to express my particular gratitude to István Virágvölgyi and the entire team at the Capa Center, whose dedication and care have made it possible for us to come together this evening to celebrate these five artists.

And we must also thank those without whose trust these photographs could never have been made: the families, the pub owners, the pilgrims and the residents of isolated farmsteads along the border, all of whom welcomed the photographers into their lives.

Documentary photography demands time, attentiveness and trust. What I value most in the work of these five finalists is that they have taken these demands seriously and, through the stories they have chosen to tell, have brought us closer to other people, other communities and other ways of life.

My wish for all of them is that they may continue to find stories worth setting out to discover; that they may have the courage to draw close to those stories; and that they may find audiences who receive what they bring back with curiosity and open minds.

My heartfelt congratulations to all five finalists. I thank the jury for its work and everyone whose support has made this evening possible.

Thank you for joining us in celebrating the artists of Hungarian photography.

The welcome address was delivered at the Capa Grand Prize 2026 award ceremony.

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