Folia historica 18

III. Műhely - elméleti, módszertani, gyakorlati kérdések - Cs. Lengyel Beatrix: Veress Ferenc Kemény Gábor portréja fotokerámián

and Paris and as a result his technical knowledge showed considerable development. In 1856 Veress produced his first life-size portrait. His first visit cards are dated 1859. In 1859 was published his first article on photography. In the same year he made photo series picturing transylvanian countryside and places of interest employing already dry collodium technique. He had been the first to use this technique in Hungary. In 1865 Veress had been nominated the official photographer of the Transylvanian Museum. This period compiled several albums, a part of them for the society supporting the museum, displaying Kolozsvár and Tiansylvania. Some of these albums have been peserved in Austria, Hungary and Romania. The year 1882 find him teaching photography, as an associate of the Kolozsvár Franz Josef University. Between 1882 and 1888 Veress is the owner, editor and publisher of the Fényképészeti Lapok (Photographic Review), the first professional photographic journal in Hungary. Starting fom the early eighties Veress takes more and more interest in colour photography. In 1889 he manages to fix a heliochrome image, which claimed due success at the Paris World Fair. In 1889 Veress closes his studio and devotes the rest of his life to his experiments, slowly sinking in poverty. Dies on the 3rd of April 1916. Veress experimented for many years with photoceramics, which he met for the first time in 1855 at the Paris World Fair. In 1867, after the Paris World Fair rached the conditions to employ the just seen,well settled technique to start his photoceramic experiments. Lacking neccessary funds to learn this technique, he carried on his experiments in selfrefiance. The first results to show the public arrived, at the middle of the seventies. The first opportunity to exhibit photoceramics, vessels featuring Hungarian aristocrats, had come in the year 1867, the National Industry and Farm Produce Fair, in Szeged. The contemporary critics revealed mainly the dimness of dark parts. In 1879 at the National Industry Fair in Székesfehérvár, Veress exhibist more than 300 photo decorated porcelains, beeing awarded an exhibition medal. According to recent research, he had shown the public his photoceramics once more in 1881, shortly before liquidating his kiln, built with great fnancial effort. It is supposed that after this he stopped once and for all to produce photo decorated ceramics. By all means the high cost of this porcelains led to the failure of his venture. Many of Veress produced photoceramics survived in public and private collections, though a more or less complete treat of these, and his techique's exploration has not yet been done. Our study tried to make the first steps by presenting a Veress photo decorated porcelain preserved at the National Musem. The dish shows Gábor Kemény's (first Minister of Agriculture, then Minister of Transport) half length portrait, in Veress' so characteristic gold brownish tone, in specific Hungarian clothes, his right turned face shown in profile. The dish had originally a supprot bearing floral decorations and the photo is framed with floral and animalier decorative elements. The negative of the photo, as we ascertained, had been made in Veress's studio, presumably in the November-December of 1865. The positive had been burnt on presumably in 1879, short time before the most significant exhibition in Székesfehérvár, in his studio on ready-made white-ware, purchased earlier for photographic purposes. According to explored sources Gábor Kemény supported Veress's experiments, and he was to poen the exhibition in Székesfehérvár. The present study, beyond the concrete presentation of the photo decorated dish, attempted on the one hand to gather the contemporary press reports in order to build up the chronology of Veress's photoceramics experiments, on the other hand we tried to give an explanation for the first time to Veress's aricle on photoceramics and his own technique published in the Fényképészeti Lapok (Photograhic Review). 287