Nadja Massün: Intimate Universe
Visiting is free of charge
September 19, 2019 – October 27, 2019
Every day 8 am – 7 pm
Closed on public holidays.
Capa Center – 8F Gallery
Curator: Gabriella Csizek
Nadja Massün’s work is a good example of a sensitivity that subsumes and forgets about the technique in an intuitive search to reveal the spiritual world of human from which the experience of the beauty emerges. We see in the photos of Nadja a word in the air, a sound of laughter, a wink among friends and the sadness behind a look. The photographic moment becomes a moment of revelation.
The photographer’s action thus becomes a dialogue with her surroundings, which is almost invariably constituted by people in everyday or festive situations, dramatic or peaceful, but always communicative. These are images not only eloquent, but full of openness: the only sense they convey is the poetic content of reality, which manifests itself when there is a sensitive look to hear it and penetrate its ephemeral essence.
Nadja Massün’s years in community settings, allows her to perceive and understand, above cultural, geographical, linguistic differences, intimacy, unsaved yearnings, contained sadness and people’s joy. Nadja Massün is indeed a great traveler – born in the Congo and raised in Colombia, Peru, Geneva and Costa Rica – but above all a traveler of close encounters, for whom it is vital to merge into the environment, participate, listen, soak up of that alternate reality to which the trip exposes it. She takes advantage of her sensitive cosmopolitanism to explore the roots of human feelings in places as dissimilar as Transylvania, Oaxaca or New York. The photographs in which a child watches with amazement the transformation of his father into a “Minga” (one of the characters in the famous Dance of the Devils, in Oaxaca) are very revealing, as an “exotic” and unusual action which in spite of the strangeness places us in a familiar and quotidien environment.
Massün’s portraits are a sample of how to take everyday life to a higher level. The casual pose, an embroidery casually placed on the face, a languid backlight that makes us think of an unoccupied afternoon are many other elements of everyday life that, taken advantage of by a sharp eye, become true classic paintings, making us feel the calm and imperishable atmosphere of a portrait of Van Eyck or Bonnard. (After the essay of Rafael Segovia writer, translator. The writing was made for the exhibition Timeless Stories [Relatos sin Tiempo], which was on view at the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Oaxaca, Mexico) in February, 2019.)
French-Hungarian freelance photographer. Grew up and spent most of her life in South America (Perú and Colombia) and Mexico. BA in Economics and a Master´s degree in Political Science. Starts working with the United Nations in Mexico City and then moves to Oaxaca, Mexico, where she works with indigenous communities in the Sierra Juarez and Mixe region. Although always deeply interested in and art cinema, and at that time living in Oaxaca – a city of inspiration for painters and some of the greatest photographers –, she initiates her formation in the Manuel Álvarez Bravo Photographic Center (1999-2006). Since 2006, after a workshop organized in Oaxaca by The International Film and Video Workshops of Rockport, Maine, she gets also involved in documentary videos. She is currently working on a photographic project about the Táncház (Dance house) movement, declared since 2011, Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the Unesco, for being a model of teaching folk dance and music, and whose purpose is the rescue and transmission of traditional music and dance to younger generations, in Budapest and Hungarian communities in Transylvania.
Nadja Massün: Intimate Universe
Nadja Massün’s exhibition invites you for an ever-exciting adventure, an encounter with classical photography. It presents you with the abstract power of black-and-white photography, and its capability for creating unprecedented worlds. But not only with that. Her photographs are also capable of preserving and passing on the condensed intimacy of each frame in a very compelling and sensual way. And this is one of the aspects that make her photography so unique.
Nadja Massün started her career with the exceptionally sensitive presentation of the members of her family, as well as the emotional, intimate relationship between them. She captured the events of her daughters’ lives in emotionally charged moments to show these in her photographs. The oeuvre born from the found moments and arranged pictures forms an organic whole in spite of the apparent differences, as the common goal is to capture the subtle glowing of our existence in the moment, the present.
Her focus has instinctively shifted towards the harmony of co-existence. Like the building that finds its home within the landscape, as they create an elevated sense of beauty together; the stills, in which the backgrounds almost embrace the subjects of the photographs; or the portraits, where not only the faces, the gazes, and the relationships are preserved, but also the miraculous uniqueness of the personality, or personalities, and the unparalleled character itself. And the soul opens up for her, and the involuntary gaze is present in each image, making it possible to show the magical substance of the presence in the quiet of her photographs. The world she presents is filled with subtle details, the covert and wondrously radiant presence of forms and lights.
The power of Nadja Massün’s artistic universe is not only present in the strong intimacy evident in her images, but also in how she is able to show us the magical nature of beauty. (Gabriella Csizek, curator)