Bán András - Horváth Péter - Szabad szemmel

Péter Horváth belongs to the generation that, at the end of the seventies, brought a fundamentally new voice to Hungarian photography culture, either on the surfaces of newspapers or on the walls of exhibition spaces. The task of the previous generation was to create professional photography and its institutional system, to cleanse photography of the oppressive social reality and the confusing "Hungarian" tradition. The challenge of the Péter Horváths was the acceptance of pictorial autonomy.

He started as an amateur photographer in Baja, then visited the Hungarian Telegraph Office, several newsrooms - including the famous Képes7, which tried to bring independent photojournalism to success in the late eighties - and for two decades now he has been following the individual path of autonomous photography through carefully developed series. What we undertake: presenting the magic of a very talented, quiet, sensitive artist. There can be no question of completeness. If we only think of the reporter Péter Horváth: several decades, an average of one report per week, fifty or one hundred pictures per report - the result of the operation is hundreds of thousands. This book can accommodate two hundred and fifty pictures. But not everything from his wayfinding and thematic initiatives fits here either. He was interested in many topics and approaches. Therefore, in the first half of the book you will find a few favorite pictures, but then the larger cycles follow, behind which lie dozens of other important works.