I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laci Török is past 60? That slab-sided, skinny, long-haired boy who, as a snot-nosed lighting technician, provoked the old hands at the Hungarian News Agency by parking his Citroen Duck on Naphegy Street? Where at best two Trabants and a Wartburg were parked among the cars with gov-ernment number plates? He who was bold enough to make his obnoxious photograph, Family, which, to top it all off, won him a World Press Photo prize? He, the lighting technician of 22? It is still quite an achievement today, but back then it was the ace of aces in the pho -tojournalist business. Is the man who is pigeonholed in my head as one of the most promising young photogra-phers really so old? Is this Török 65? Who just sits on the porch of his farmhouse, his Barn Gallery in Salföld, a spritzer in front of him, a smoking cigarette in his hand, just contemplating his surroundings as a good farmer? No way.
This was not the way I knew him. Nor is he like this. I have written about him in some encyclopaedia that he is the photographer who never took a single snapshot. He is not one of those photographers who carry their cam-era everywhere they go, and instantly shoot if they see something. No. He is not interested in the thing called photographable reality, which just happens. Török is not a chronicler in the traditional sense of the word. Or if he is, his photos at best tell what he is like, what he thinks, what opinion he has about things, how he sees the world. Come to think of it, perhaps he is a chroni-cler, indeed. In one of his writings, John Szarkowsky distinguishes two basic types of photographers. There may be more, but he goes for two. He calls them win-dow types and mirror types. Winwin-dow types observe the world through their camera and show in their photos what they have seen through that window. Photojour-nalists, documentary, socio- and other such photogra-phers. As opposed to them, for mirror types, reality is just fiction; it is always what they create, produce, give rise to. If I wanted to freely interpret the renowned photo historian, to them, the image they create is the actual reality, instead of the reality they experience. Török has sided with this latter camp. Instead of sniffing about in the world with his camera, he thinks, talks, converses, participates a lot, he is there, and if possible, not with just anyone, but with the better poets of his age, and not just anywhere, but preferably at Kárpátia Restaurant,
Hungária (today New York) Café, or at the Barn Gallery.
He exchanges ideas with people who live in a different world and think in a different system of notions: what one associates to a poem, the other to a picture. This latter is Török. The former is, say, Károly Szikszai. Who wrote this poem about, for, to Török.
Dream for the Spring to L.T.
I would close my eyes.
I would not have to stare at this rain, this mop-smelling night,
I would not have to shiver for the poem stepping out of the window.
And the traitors would not step into the room, and drink my blood;
they would leave my bed intact, and the glass on the table too,
and the heart would not leap to the ceiling.
A white cane in my hand, so dark it is already!
They are coming, they who lift the sea in their grip, wounded by the fancied bullet in their chest, they are coming, with their greasy Samsonian hair, they say we can fly,
we know about the freedom, of which there is only one, as of the marvellous griffin,
they are coming, shading my window I would close my eyes—
I need a dream for this spring.
On second and third reading I think that not only do I understand, but also feel this poem. I feel how simi-lar the images, and the notions lined up in the poet’s and the photographer’s heads were. How, whatever we think, practically everything is decided in the mind. How the thought, the idea is the most important, and find-ing the adequate means of expression and form is just secondary. Although by far not insignificant, not at all.
In fact, Török’s entire career from Family to the Barn, every point of it, but really, every photo, every deed can be understood using this cipher. Why, what did the poet do? He saw Török’s photographs. He saw and heard
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him, he witnessed when and how he reacted to what, what he said about what, and based on this, an image had formed in his mind. He found the form of free verse, placing one word after another to match this image. And lo and behold, the poem is complete. And what does Török, the photographer, do? He speculates, cogitates, arranges, plans, organises and manually does every-thing a Photoshop warrior would get done today in three clicks, and only then does he press the shutter. His pho-tographs are born, conceived in a classical manner; he delivers them, gives birth to them. Based on all this, no wonder a lot of his pictures have been inspired by litera-ture and carried out using fine art techniques. He knows exactly that nothing is more important than for an artist to have an unmistakably unique, idiosyncratic, instantly recognisable artistic language. There is nothing wrong with that; Török found his way with his first images, and, except for some vague deviations, he has been march-ing, well, let’s not exaggerate, pacing straight forward
on his path. And he even knows, for he is a literate, edu-cated man, that true gems, true curiosities in art are to be found predominantly in the border zones, in the in-termedial sphere, where one or more genres, forms of expression, technical methods, encounter and interact.
Well, Laci Török was able to continuously operate in this manner. Being on the periphery. Integration. Hybridis-ing photographic and fine art image with the thHybridis-ings that grow in the lands of literature, I might say, their genetic manipulation. He is searching for the boundaries be-tween the very concrete image and conceptuality.
A poet wrote this, and let’s believe him: “I am con-vinced that Török is a lyrical poet, formulating his po-Török László: Sztereo 1. 1982
monochrome színes nagyítás, 100 x 100 cm László Török: Stereo 1, 1982
monochromatic print, 100 x 100 cm
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Török László: Sztereo 2. 1982
monochrome színes nagyítás, 100 x 100 cm László Török: Stereo 2, 1982
monochromatic print, 100 x 100 cm ems in the language of photography. Mellow and
mel-ancholy poems, dominated by first person singular subjectivity, casting a peculiar bittersweet light on the depicted object, like a filter attached to the lens. … In every work of his, Török is interested in, and driven by, his own loneliness”. (Tibor Zalán: “Huszonöt év. Török László gyűjteményes kiállítása elé”. [Twenty-five years.
Foreword to László Török’s retrospective exhibition.]) Even after forty years of work, his oeuvre can-not be greater than, say, five hundred photographs, at least three hundred of which display nude women. As far as I’m concerned, the most important part of this oeuvre, besides Family, is his series Gypsies, which was made with the help of Károly Bari. Then there was his deed, his role in becoming an inevitably significant fig-ure on the Hungarian photography scene by opening his Pajta Galéria (Barn Gallery) no matter what, after the disgraceful shutdown of the legendary Fotóművészeti Galéria (Art Photo Gallery) on Váci Street. And let us not
forget how he led the First Creative Group, organised exhibitions in Hungary and abroad, edited photo books, and made a film about his contemporaries. But we will get round to this later.
A close and important relative of his was Vidor Török, who had been working at the Hungarian Television since its beginnings. “My uncle was cameraman Vidor Török, a now legendary figure of the light sensitive profession.
Photography infiltrated our working class family through him. For 27 years, I lived at the Transylvanian quarter on Százados Road, in the vicinity of the artist colony”. (Fo-toVideó, Jun 2009) Vidor’s nephew is not exaggerating a bit. Someone else, who has no family ties whatsoever,
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goes much further, when writing, “First there was Vidor.
The legendary Török “the Great”, the excellent camera-man, who recorded five out of the ninety minutes of a football match, and all three goals were on the tape.…
The fact that he directed his nephew’s attention to-wards photography is also part of his oeuvre now. This was how one of the most intriguing figures of Hungar-ian photography, “the Little” Török, was born.…” (I.A.:
“Törököt fogtunk. A magyar fotóművészet iskolája”. [We caught a Turk. School of Hungarian Art Photography.]
Világlap, April 1996)
At the Hungarian Film Lab, where he got a job by virtue of Vidor, it was József Hefelle who gave him a
camera. For a long time, Török considered him as his master. Then he was drafted as a soldier, and this did not go by without leaving its mark; his experiences here inspired some of the photographs of his early ironic, comical, nostalgic period. His career continued. If you want to be a photographer, you have to go to the MTI Hungarian News Agency, to rephrase the folk song.
So he did, like many others, such as János Vető, János Fenyő, or Károly Kincses… we all became lighting tech-nicians at MTI Photo around the same time. Török also worked in Illustration and in the Agriculture section.
More precisely, he was carrying the heavy Linhof Tech-nikas, the Hasselblad sets, the large Bronica with all
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the film-holders, the 15 kg flashes, he would have to fill the magazines in the changing bag, or hold the second flash at events. I’m not chiding him, not at all: it was a very good school for beginners, who were once and for all infused with photography. Even if their salary was a mere HUF 1100. Which was even then half of barely sufficient. And the place offered relatively few chances
for a break-through: the old foxes – photojournalists with their status – jealously guarded their places. Un-der these circumstances, Török did something no light technician had ever done, or would do again. In 1972, he made a blast with his photograph entitled Family, and won the World Press Photo of the Year Award. This pho-to would decide his fate: this was when the relationship of Török with photography was finalised. He seemed to have lost as much as he won by it, as the cultural politics of the time assessed his success as the betrayal of the Socialist family ideal. Of course, Family was composed of the members of not one, but at least three families, the old neighbour Géza with his wife, who were told in advance only that little Laci was preparing to do some nude photography, but who would get naked was not re-vealed until Ibolya, his acquaintance from the Kárpátia breezed in stark naked. The wide-eyed adolescent also came from the Százados Road neighbourhood to sit at the edge of the photo for eternity. And although the idea
of the photo was conceived years before, Török’s mod-els happened to gather for this one occasion as if an anthropologist had collected and arranged them. From that point, it depended only on the photographer’s skill to make the most of the situation he had given rise to.
And he did. It was over in twenty minutes, and from that point on, it would be Török’s most emblematic photo for
decades to come, to this very day. “This photo was taken on Százados Road, in a house with very modest small flats, with a 500W flood light and a sheet for a back-ground. I had told the older married couple that a naked girl would be sitting next to them. I set everything up – I was using a Practisix, and I called Ibolya, who walked in naked and sat down in between them. Old Géza was quite taken aback, but I tried diverting their attention with instructions. Look here please, you turn that way…
I shot 12 frames and everyone left happily. This is the best of the shots, with the girl gazing out of the picture.
That year at the national photo exhibition, I got a very good review in the literary and political weekly ÉS by Török László: Illusztráció I-II-III. Zalán Tibornak, 1980 monochrome színes nagyítás, 3 db 40 x 40 cm
László Török: Illustration I-II-III, for Tibor Zalán, 1980 monochromatic print, 3 pieces 40 x 40 cm
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Jenő Alföldy. That was when the first ever collection of photos was sent by MTI to the World Press Photo compe-tition – opening towards the West – where I won a prize.”
(FotoVideó, Ibid.) “Leafing through the guestbooks of the World Press’76 exhibition at the National Gallery.… Half of the comments deal with you and your two exhibited photographs. Mostly outraged, reproaching, mocking….
They simply couldn’t get their heads round the fact that there on Százados Road, you know, where everyone is a baker at the bread factory or a carpenter, in a small flat – you’ve been to our flat – someone would take this as a subject. They wrote things like who is this Török, where did he come from, who are his relatives? …Who are my relatives? Well, first of all my parents. My dad had been a galvanizer, already a pensioner then, and my mom was packing vegetable crates all her life. It wasn’t they who granted this Golden Eye…” (Mozgó Világ, 1977, no. 4, pp. 64-71) “I wasn’t allowed to travel abroad for the award ceremony… the air froze around me at MTI within moments, which led to their declaring that I couldn’t be their photographer. They considered me untalented, and said things, like that I had stolen the idea from some-where, and the main argument was that the photo didn’t represent Hungary, as it was provocative, and finally they declared that I wasn’t suitable for a press career”.
(Bacskai: Fotóművészet) Where are they now, the people who said this? Family, on the other hand, still makes an impact; it hasn’t faded, but rather matured. Of course, by now it is not primarily the idea, but the content, changing with time, which we consider its greatest virtue.
The next year, he tried himself at WPP again, and won a prize, this time third, with his photo entitled No Time to Wait. He then made some more similarly funny, ironic, outrageous photographs, but these didn’t reach the lev-el of success of the first two, and Török also recognised that this was a dead end. “I more or less gave this up, as I saw that this kind of ‘joking’ was not viable, as the idea was so strong that it almost endangered the iconicity of the image. I had less successful pieces; some of it seemed like a dead end, and so I started thinking about reducing the joking part in photography as much as pos-sible, to formulate it in the simplest possible way, like a pictogram. These photographs in my book, Modifications seem to be more refined”. (Bacskai: Ibid.) The book was published in 1983 as No. 4 of the JAK books (published
by the Attila József Circle), but first in the series of non-literary, photographic volumes. Its foreword was written by Tibor Zalán: “When reinstated into an everyday envi-ronment, modified ordinary images seem to be beyond reality, feathery as a dream, surrealistically associative.
Török first of all composes reality, and not the created image.… Instead of depiction, he chooses expression.
He only works with staged scenes.… László Török is an artist with character, maybe even too much. He puts his entire life into a single manically repeated gesture, whatever theme he touches. Actually, this gesture is his only theme. He keeps iterating the same thing from the first photo to the last”. These sentences seemed true then, and remain so today; so far as I know Török, they will not change. They are timeless. Which today, when words and sentences are devalued the moment they are uttered, is already a big deal.
From here, the Török of Modifications was on his way towards Quotations, each photo of which reflected on late and contemporary figures of Hungarian literature and their works. Here Török lines up his entire photograph-ic arsenal. Mostly monochrome photos, the colours are mostly brown and blue. Double, triple exposures or mo-tion blur. Montage technique. Frequent featuring of the female body. Sheets, creased backgrounds. Appearance of image and caption in the picture with the same force.
Have I omitted anything? He was friends with practically all the writers who were directly or indirectly present in his photos, including Tibor Zalán, József Szervác, István Ágh, Jenő Balaskó, István Bella, Kornél Döbrentei, Erzsi Tóth, Károly Bari, Károly Szikszai, Ciprián G. Csajka… A list of strong characters. It entailed a lot of beer mugs and wineglasses, numerous nights of conversation, and a multitude of poems read. And the images, which, if a word, a thought, a poem set something off in Török, sooner or later evolved into poems. Rather later than sooner. For he spent a lot of time pondering over most of his photos, writing and drawing sketches, picking the most suitable models who contributed to the visualisation of the double poetic thought, brought to life in both words and images.
Tibor Zalán again: “…Two constant elements of his photographs are the female nude and the creased dra-pery symbolising and eliminating the space… The artist does not trust the self-organising principle of nature.
For his photographic moments, there are no natural
Török László: Egy kamera emlékére 1-3. Bella Istvánnak, 1977, zselatinos ezüst nagyítás barnított, 2 db 12 x 23 cm, 1 db 15,6 x 23 cm László Török: In memory of a camera 1-3, for István Bella, 1977. gelatin silver print, 2 pieces 12 x 23 cm, 1 piece 15,6 x 23 cm
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Török László: Akt No. 3. 1992 Cibachrome, 35 x 45 cm László Török: Nude no. 3, 1992 Cibachrome, 35 x 45 cm scenes, as signs, natural signs lose their genuineness,
or more precisely, their autonomous meaning.… Török, therefore, starts off from the other side, from signs re-duced to themselves. He chooses a sign. His primary and exclusive sign is the naked woman… The photograph eliminates the environment, as well; seemingly real re -ality is replaced by seemingly unreal constructed real-ity”. (A lényeg mindig meztelen [The essence is always naked], Élet és Irodalom, 19 March 1982.) I have already written in a different context, in a different manner, that Török’s lens depicts, rather than documents for eter-nity. The best example of this is his series Gypsies, to which he owes his acquaintance with Károly Bari. He accompanied Bari on his research and documentation trips throughout Transylvania and Hungary, recording the vestiges of traditional Gypsy culture. Török photo-graphed without making use of the topoi of photos
or more precisely, their autonomous meaning.… Török, therefore, starts off from the other side, from signs re-duced to themselves. He chooses a sign. His primary and exclusive sign is the naked woman… The photograph eliminates the environment, as well; seemingly real re -ality is replaced by seemingly unreal constructed real-ity”. (A lényeg mindig meztelen [The essence is always naked], Élet és Irodalom, 19 March 1982.) I have already written in a different context, in a different manner, that Török’s lens depicts, rather than documents for eter-nity. The best example of this is his series Gypsies, to which he owes his acquaintance with Károly Bari. He accompanied Bari on his research and documentation trips throughout Transylvania and Hungary, recording the vestiges of traditional Gypsy culture. Török photo-graphed without making use of the topoi of photos