The Shadow of Light

Some of the black and white photo paper lit in the bottom right corner was consumed by the flame, and its light exposed the surface of the paper, which was coated with a photosensitive emulsion. Then the photo paper went through the usual process of developing and fixing, recording a state. In this way, it represents a kind of pictorial representation of the effects that have been made on it. The question is, what would we be talking about if this self-destructive process had not stopped. Does the object completely burn and all that remains is some black fly ash? In that case, we would be dealing with a symbolic/action artwork, known only through description or through still or moving image documentation of photographic origin. This is clearly not the case. Here, it is the medial properties of the photographic image that the artist was investigating. Fire and light, and image and shadow. These words bring us to Plato's cave fable (Plato: State, Book VII); the people bound by the parable sit with their backs to the outside world from birth, and can only see the shadows cast on the cave wall, and so take it for reality. The light of the fire burning behind them projects the shapes passing in front of them onto the wall as a kind of puppet show (shadow play). This analogy of Plato's can be easily paralleled with the modern medium of cinema. People sitting in the dark, watching moving images projected on a screen behind their backs. The reverse of this projection is the camera, whether it is a moving or still image. And the prototype of any camera is the camera obscura. Light is projected through a hole into a dark space, isolated from the outside world, and projected onto a surface (upside down) to create a picture of the environment in front of it. The photographic process detects these internal shadow images (darkness-lightness relations) on light-sensitive surfaces (film, photographic paper, sensor). In Plato's idealistic philosophy, the painted image - also as a painting, i.e. a work of art - is only a poor copy of the visible, tangible world, which is only a shadow of the perfect world of unknowable ideas. In any case, it can be said that the photographic image, with the help of technology and science, using light, is a shadow image - albeit in a complex form. (In the physical environment, the view is perceived by the reflection and self-shadowing of light from objects.)

              The image, which is also shaped by fire and its light, appears almost a decade later, after Antal Jokesz's work, in Tibor Várnagy's series Fire Contacts (1987, gelatin-silver print, variable sizes, 11 pieces). In keeping with the decade and the artist's habitus, it is a more sensual form, born of instinctive experimentation. Black-and-white photographic papers contain colours in varying degrees and in varying ways, due to physico-chemical degradation. The question is whether these objects are photographs, and how far we can go, what else can be called a (light) image. From the same year is Ágnes Eperjesi's Matches (1987, brome silver gelatin print, 30x24 cm). In an image that can be defined as both a photogram and a luminogram, burning matchsticks create their own photographic imprint.

If we take these works as a starting point, we see a non-typical use of fire as a phenomenon in these photographic-based works. However, this suggestion - the concept of the exhibition - is not limited to this. Nor is it necessarily limited to exploring only the field of light-sensitive materials, i.e. it is not just about cameraless works. It reflects on an important characteristic of the photographic image that can best be described in terms of its creation. A kind of imprint, where light as energy and other forms of energy - heat, electricity - leave their mark on physical beings.

These questioning processes are initiated by artists, who use the processes to create images. These images are recorded forms of phenomena, but they are not made for scientific purposes.

There are parallels between scientific forms of imaging and these works, but the emphasis here is on imaging and answering artistic questions. As these works focus on the traces left by certain processes, they are reduced to a purely formulated purpose and visualisation. They are works of art, i.e. coded aesthetic forms, whose reception is aided by texts written by the artists. At the same time, there is a need for openness on the part of the recipient, which could be described as a natural pleasure in the phenomena of the perceived world.

Gábor Ősz Energy Transform (1994, installation and projection) is a philosophical-poetic work about light. In physical terms, invisible light is detected as heat in the infrared range by a special camera. Of course, the relationship between perception, image and light is much more complex than being reduced to a technical device.

Kitti Nagyváradi deals with the forms of the electrical phenomenon known as the Lichtenberg diagram. In one of her series we see drawings made on flat film. In another series, high voltage current burns a distinctive pattern into the surface of the wood. Literally, fractal images are created on a traditional, painterly picture-board.

Tamás Badár interprets the traces of microorganisms cultured on the surface of the coloured negative film as an image. We see traditional, analogue illuminated colour photographs (C-print), but the substrate itself becomes the image. Such traces can be found mainly on old glass-plate photographs, only there they are present at the expense of the captured image. This is where the "error" comes to the fore and becomes the subject of investigation.

Ágoston Déry uses a camera obscura (pinhole camera). He observes the most elementary phenomena. In Shot, the hole for the image is created by a bullet fired from a gun, capturing the full-length, life-size image of the artist at the moment of the shot. In another large-scale work, he captures the full orbit of the Moon in the sky (Moon Track, 2023, silver gelatin enlargement 100x300 cm) Naturally displayed in negative (black and white), which is a paper image and therefore a unique copy. One of the characteristics of analogue silver halide photography is the negative-positive relationship. This means that the silver salts darken when exposed to light, allowing the creation of light images.

Máté Dobokay's Developing till the Exhaustion is a grey scale of 604 pieces. In this case, we do not experience the light-shadow relationship captured on black and white photographic paper as an image.

It is an illusion that comes from our knowledge and expectations. In this case, the cards that were exposed to the point of blackness became fainter and fainter as the caller faded. They are about the technical process of black-and-white photography (gelatin silver print), so the work, reflecting on these media characteristics, is about the inseparable relationship between image and medium.

Ágnes Eperjesi's Prism Rolled Systematycally in All Directions (1987, gelatin silver print) shows a photogram of a glass prism breaking white light into the colours of the spectrum. Her Color in Perspective (2021) is a very brief, pictorial representation of the essence of colour theory.

Dezső Szabó’s Limits of Light (2017, luminogram, silver, gelatin print, 58x48 cm each) are prints made using pyrotechnic materials. Their pictorical world evokes the photographic images of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, familiar from the history of science. Many scientific discoveries were made during this period, thanks to the presence and importance of photography in scientific experiments.

The meaning of acheiropoieta is literally "a thing not made by hand". By this we mean images which, according to the Christian - Greek Orthodox - tradition, were not created by the hand of human beings. These images are not believed to have been created by ordinary mortals, or to be mechanical, albeit miraculous, impressions of the original. Since the creation of an acheiropoieta is due to a miracle, only these can authentically represent both the human and divine, transcendent natures of Jesus Christ. These pictures are mainly portraits, but not portraits in the modern sense. They are not works of art, but cult images interpreted in the context of religion. They are referenced by sacred texts, and the 'imprint' of Jesus' face gives authenticity and experience to the dogma. Such icons are the Mandylion (Mandülion, of Arabic origin, meaning small cloth, the icon type of the handkerchief), also known as the Abgar image, and the Hodegetria, as well as certain Russian icons. In Western Christianity, the Shroud of Turin and the Shroud of Veronica (vera icon=real image) are known as sacred objects of this type, as well as images.

The recalled, defining antecedent of the history of Western Christian imagery is unmissable for two reasons at the same time. The connection between the image not created by human hands and the photographic image - but especially the "cameraless" image (created without the use of a camera) - is obvious. The effect produced by the "created" image, which today is better understood in terms of a natural scientific worldview (myth), evokes or can evoke strong emotions in the recipient in a similar way to the cult image. There is such a specific nature to these images. The other aspect is that the photographic image itself is one of the main sources of the existing situation. Billions of billions of images circulate online. Copies of copies of copies. It is no longer possible to follow and it is meaningless to interpret the reference of each image, but rather to consider it as a kind of data.

Suppose there is still art, and we know what we mean by that. The works on display interpret why we make pictures. And the artists provide first-hand information to the viewer, which helps the works to be understood and explained. Modern art itself once created the texts along which works can be interpreted today.

The theme of the exhibition and the problems it raises link the works and their creators from different periods. It reflects a type of thinking and perception of art that transcends generations, not necessarily tied to geographical location or changing artistic currents. A kind of fundamental thinking about the image and art itself.

Dezső Szabó

Tamás Badár, Ágoston Déry, Máté Dobokay, Ágnes Eperjesi, Antal Jokesz, Kitti Nagyváradi, Gábor Ősz, Dezső Szabó, Tibor Várnagy
Opening: 27 October 2023, 18:00 
Curator: Dezső Szabó
On view: 26 November 2023