OPENING: CAPA CENTER

The Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center was opened on December 2, 2013 with its first special exhibition. Selected by an international jury, award-winners of the Capa Center’s contest were also announced at the event.

OPENING: Capa Center, “Capa Project – Contemporary Projected Images” exhibit

A new and modern visual arts institute, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center was founded in Budapest on July 12, 2013. By creating this public resource, the esteemed accomplishments of Hungarian photographers are ensured to receive professional recognition worldwide. The fruition of this project is the culmination of several years of work, built upon the important milestone of purchasing and bringing Robert Capa’s estate to Hungary in 2008.

The photography center’s home is a landmark building on Budapest’s Nagymező Street, built by Lajos Ernst. The functions of this new institution for the visual arts include organizing Hungarian and international exhibitions, professional events, founding a prestigious prize of photography, creating an international program of residency, presenting Hungarian and foreign photographers and workshops, establishing a training centre with a wide range of influence, publishing technical books and a professional magazine, creating archives and starting a digitalization program of contemporary photography, too.

The Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center was opened on December 2, 2013 with a special exhibition titled Capa Project – Contemporary Projected Images. It is irregular in several ways, partly because the works of art for the exhibition were selected by a jury of Hungarian and foreign members – Tamás Féner, Kossuth Prize-winning photographer; Kincses Károly, museologist of photography; Maria Kapayeva, photographer, university lecturer; Olga Jürgenson, photographer, curator; Miklós Peternák, Head of the Intermedia Department at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts; Balázs Telek, photographer, artist, curator; Gabriella Uhl, art historian, curator – from the submissions to the contest announced by the Capa Center. The jury did not have an easy job, since a total of 1001 works were submitted to the contest between September 23 and November 3.

The works of the following photographers and groups of artists are shown at the exhibition: Mona Birkás; the students of the Photography Department of the Art School of Buda; Gábor Erdős; György Gáti; Lucy Harris; László 2 Hegedűs; Bálint Hirling; Kata Illés; Sam Jury; Sándor Áron Károly; Tamás Kende; Árpád Kurucz; Benedek Lakatos; Péter Mátrai; Barbara Nagy; Dávid Nemcsik; the Photography Department staff members of Origo online site; Zsófi Pályi; Milán Rácmolnár; Artúr Rajcsányi; Tamás Schild; Liina Siib; Gyula Sopronyi; Árpád Sopsits; Kata Száraz; István Szőnyi; Clifton Stewart; Eszter Walton; Sári Zagyvai. Besides the contenders, renowned artists András Bozsó, Lajos Csontó, Imre Drégely, Barna Illés, and Lenke Szilágyi were also invited for the projected exhibition by the curator Balázs Telek.

Another peculiarity of the first show at the Capa Center is that these exhibited works are not pieces of classical paper-based hard copies, but instead they are reflected from some sort of surface by means of various technical instruments and sometimes they are shown in a transilluminated way or drawn by millions of tiny pixels at the exhibition halls.