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<\/a>David Harris, Guest Curator (left), and artist Gabor Szilasi (right) during the press preview, June 18, 2013. Photo: Jennifer Park. Courtesy of the Ryerson Image Centre<\/p>\nSzilasi is a wonderful storyteller, and I was lucky enough to look at his photographs and listen to the accompanying stories at the press preview. The exhibition is organized\u00a0around the most important locations\u00a0in Szilasi\u2019s life: Budapest, rural Quebec and Montreal.<\/p>\n
Szilasi was born in Budapest. As a young man he was interested in art and wanted to be a painter. He was advised by a family friend to try photography since it didn\u2019t require\u00a0as much background knowledge. So he bought his first camera and started his photographic experiments, just for the fun of it. His first subjects included panoramic views of the city, buildings and the people who occupied them, his friends and strangers among them. In the Gresham Building, looking towards Roosevelt square<\/em> (1956) the light and shadow capture a very artistic view with a somewhat dramatic feeling. Szilasi\u2019s most famous work from that time called Motorcyclists at Lake Balaton<\/em> (1954) was an \u201caccident\u201d created by the camera\u2019s sudden exposure. The artist was on vacation, lying in the sand with his camera as it went off and just captured the couple driving out of the picture and because of the low viewpoint it chopped off the top of their heads. Unfortunately this composition became symbolic\u00a0of the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet occupation in October, 1956, when thousands of people died, I, a young child at that time, still remember the blood running on the street\u00a0like rain. Szilasi captured some events of those terrible days, meetings, line ups for food and people fighting. Like many others, his family left Hungary and came to Canada in 1957.<\/p>\n In\u00a01980 Szilasi went back to Hungary and trough the following years nine other trips followed. His photographs from that time are mostly portraits of old friends he left behind. The interiors are heavy with memories look as if time stopped there with the old armoire, the chiming clock standing\u00a0in the same place and the walls covered with books and artwork. Szilasi said that he knew even as a child about the process of memory and where memory is held. All of his photographs involve both the mind and the heart and each image has a history. His friend Adele sits in an overcrowded room in Budapest where every possible surface from floor to ceiling is covered with books and magazines. She sits there, her tired face showing the\u00a0ravages\u00a0of a hard life of a Hungarian intellectual, chain-smoking. Shortly after that photograph was taken, she fell asleep smoking, causing a fire. When she woke she tried to save all those books until she no longer could make it out and died among them.<\/p>\n Leaving the narrow streets and dark interiors of Budapest behind in 1956 and coming to Canada, Szilasi was surprised by all the open spaces of Northern Quebec. David Harris, the curator of the exhibition, called Szilasi\u2019s photographs \u201cenvironmental portraits.\u201d It is especially true of the rural Quebec series. \u00a0Working for the Office du Film du Quebec as a documentary photographer\u00a0 he travelled a lot and met people of all callings from poor farmers\u00a0and physical\u00a0labourers to the famous and rich.<\/p>\n Szilasi took\u00a0many images in Coudres, Charlevoix among them the portrait of the still beautiful, doll-like old lady Mme Alexis (Marie) Tremblay in her bedroom, Ile aux Coudres, Charlevoix <\/em>(1970). She is posing for the photograph wearing lace a collar, a pristine white apron and a hat that\u00a0was in fashion long ago. The mirror behind her reflects her back, creating a three-dimensional view of her body. There is a portrait in this portrait as well, showing Mme Tremblay at a young age. Looking at the old and young version of the lady at the same time makes us feel nostalgic\u00a0about time passing by. The small room suggest a life lived in limited, close-quarters, but madam stands her ground with pride and\u00a0the black and white image is filled with psychological complexity.\u00a0Szilasi said he loved the landscape and the villages because they grew organically and he didn\u2019t make single images but clusters of them to document their traditions and\u00a0religions in contrast to the plain and austere decorative sites of modern cities. Coudres, Charlevoix was the place where\u00a0he started to\u00a0shooting color photographs depicting the simple muted colors of country interiors (Andr\u00e9 and Marie-Rose Houde\u2019s kitchen, Lotbini\u00e8re<\/em>, January 1979).<\/p>\n Montreal, the city where he lives, gives Szilasi endless inspiration. From the beginning of the 1960s he\u00a0has\u00a0documented many of the city’s old\u00a0features and their new faces through the changes of time, technology and architectural styles. You still can find the old church and some buildings unchanged on St. Paul Street, but the whole atmosphere is changed. It is no longer a gloomy market area but the heart of old Montreal\u2019s downtown (View along St. Paul Street with Bonsecours Market, Montreal<\/em>, 1961).<\/p>\n Impressed by the graphic quality of signs, Szilasi started to collect, as well, as photograph them. He found it ironic that these American designed electric and neon commercial signs spreaded all over the buildings in Montreal but their language remained mostly French. He started to use a panoramic camera in the 1980\u2019s to capture all the variety of urban spaces and used color to enhance their richness.<\/p>\n Portraits were always an important part of Szilasi\u2019s oeuvre, and reveal a\u00a0picture diary of his personal life, friendships and professional relationships with other artists like Guido Molinari<\/em>. In some of his compositions he combines a black and white portrait, like of his daughter, Andrea\u00a0with a color image of her room, creating a psychological analysis and giving a deeper understanding of the person.<\/p>\n The last\u00a0in this exhibit\u00a0is covered by portraits of individuals from different layers of society, including \u00a0his wife Doreen, some friends and neighbours.\u00a0What makes these photographs unique is the viewpoint of the artist. Szilasi was sitting very close to the models throughout the shots and that made them feel uncomfortable. Literally seeing every detail and all their facial expressions, including the smallest spasm of a nerve, the artist was able to see \u201cthrough\u201d the surface and picture their real selves. Strangely this close-up\u00a0approach\u00a0makes them all serious. Not a single person smiles.<\/p>\n<\/a>Left: Gabor Szilasi, Luc Simard, \u00c9douard Guay, and Joseph Lajoie, <\/span><\/span><\/em>standing beside stock car, Saint-Urbain, Charlevoix, September\u2013October 1970. Right: Gabor Szilasi, R\u00e9jeanne and Ga\u00e9tan Garon in front of the <\/span><\/span>Bellevue Restaurant, Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, Beauce<\/em>, June <\/span><\/span>1973. Both Collection of the artist. \u00a9 Gabor Szilasi, 2009<\/p>\n