Slovakian photographer Karol Kállay, born on 26 April 1926 died on 4 August 2012 aged 86. He took up photography seriously when he was only 14 and by the time he was 17 had won a gold medal in the national photographic exhibition had his pictures published in the Swiss magazine ‘Camera’ and organised an exhibition of his work in Spain.
Kállay travelled the world as a freelance, published many fine books, had his work in magazines including GEO, Paris Match, Focus and der Spiegel, won various awards and had many exhibitions around in his own country and around the world – his web site lists Prague, Berlin, New York, Moscow, Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, Sofia, Paris, Hamburg, Baghdad, Cairo, Osaka, Istanbul, Havana… But he appears to have been virtually unknown in the UK, and if his death was mentioned in our press or photographic press I didn’t notice it.
I met him in Poland in 2007 where he was one of a dozen or so exhibiting photographers who gave a presentation of work at the FotoArtFestival in Bielsko-Biala where I gave a lecture. I wrote about my experiences there in a diary, although I managed to avoid mentioning him or his work and I think he is absent from my pictures.
In the catalogue for the 2007 festival, photographer Eberhard Grames writes
“His images remind rather memories of an inconspicuous, friendly smiling fellow-traveller. Because that is how it is – Karol takes photos as a good, nice and cultivated man. That is why he becomes a “dangerous” witness of all those human commonplaces and tragedies, which take place in his surrounding.”
“It is very hard to find a proper word, which would define “the image talk” of Karol. His talk with people is nice, friendly, without any superficiality. Karol likes when his photos state questions and simultaneously have the strength of a philosophical stroke.”
“Sometimes, his photographs look like a frightening moment with a little deal of cynicism (which characterise life in big cities.) Therefore some of his photos discover “that something typical” in people, caught in the twinkling of an eye.”
There certainly is something about many of these images that reflects the twinkle of the photographer’s eye which you can also see in some portraits of him. But as well as humour in his work there is a very strong sense of design underlying all of them, perhaps sometimes becoming a little too dominant for my taste, something which has remained more prominent in central European photography than here in the UK. It perhaps explains why my favourite image from the 140 or so on his site is of people sitting around in a Montmartre square, lovers kissing on a bench in the foreground, people listening to a guitarist sitting on a wall, while at right a young girl seems lost in a world of her own. That truly is a picture I would have loved to have taken.
Inez Baturo and Eberhard Grames at the 2005 FotoArt Festival in Bielsko-Biala
Thanks to a Facebook post by Inez Baturo, Program Director of the FotoArtFestival who shared http://www.baturo.art.pl/FCF/Aktualnosci/Aktualnosci.html Fundacja Centrum Fotografii’s photo of Kállay and the news of his death.