Vörös Éva: Erdélyi Mór fotográfiái - A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum tárgykatalógusai 3. (Budapest, 2012)
Vörös Eva PHOTOGRAPHS BY MÓR ERDÉLYI IN THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION The Museum of Hungarian Agriculture has since its foundation in 1896 been collecting photographs relating to the agriculture of Hungary and the Hungarianinhabited regions of the Carpathian Basin. As a result, significant groups of photographs had been assembled by the museum. The most valuable items were acquired in the period between foundation and the First World War, and a smaller group during the first reconstruction of the museum in the early 1930s. Several objects in the collections are referred to as ‘Old Museum Material’, most of which were already shown at the 1896 Millenary Exhibition. Issues of methodology related to our subject in the Original Photograph Collection The Imperial and Royal Court Photographer Mór Erdélyi had a close working relationship with the Royal Museum of Hungarian Agriculture in the first two decades of the 20th century. Written traces of this cooperation remain partly as formal correspondence with the museum and partly as his activities as a ‘reporter’ of events connected with the institution. The records of the collection retain very few data concerning Mór Erdélyi and his photographs. On the one hand, the Original Photograph Collection does not have an index of authors, and on the other the original catalogues have few references to the identity of the photographers. Furthermore, several photographs might have been catalogued under one lot number. Therefore we only have information relating to the number of items but no definitions of particular items. In many cases the catalogues did not determine the time period of the photographs either. These issues make research into a more restricted subject, such as the works of a particular photographer, even more difficult. In spite of these difficulties, there was some preliminary research into Erdélyi’s material. Dr Judit Knézy, ethnographer and curator, examined photographs of the cottages of agricultural labourers from several aspects.1 It can be determined that this series of photographs is closely related to the so-called ‘labourer’s cottage’ construction programme initiated by Minister of Agriculture Ignác Darányi, and realised between 1901- 14. The photographs, made with a matte collodion print technique, had been shot in the villages and towns of the Great Plain. The research also managed to point out that ‘from the pre-1914 period extremely few photographs have survived that depict the original interiors of peasant households’,2 not to mention the workshops of poorer village handicraftsmen. The career of Mór Erdélyi as a photographer Mór Erdélyi, Royal Hungarian Chief Councillor, Imperial and Royal Court Photographer and film production company proprietor, was born on 3 December 1866 at Érsekújvár.3 His father was a well-to-do corn dealer, ‘whose river barges rode over the Danube from Galafi to Passau but then went bankrupt in a matter of days’.4 The financial situation of the family was shaken in the 1873 Vienna stock exchange crash, and by the 1890s had become so precarious that Mór Erdélyi had to find a job.5 Therefore he left the Franciscan secondary school at Érsekújvár without passing his maturity exam and as the second oldest child of the family had to acquire an occupation. This came to the successful seventh-grade student as quite a shock.6 He travelled to Budapest to study photography. He started as an apprentice in the studio of Ede Ellinger, the famous photographer with royal patronage, and worked there between 1884 and 1891.7 Following that, he opened his first studio in 1891 in Pest under 18 Erzsébet tér, which was designed for him specifically as an apartment and a glass-covered studio.8 In 1896 he made a 15-year lease contract with the Royal Hungarian University Fund, after a decorative block of apartments had been erected on the plot bounded by Kossuth Lajos and Újvilág utca, formerly occupied by the building of a medical school.9 On the fifth floor of 1 Judit Knézy, ‘Az alföldi mezőgazdasági munkáslakások berendezése 1910-ben Erdélyi Mór felvételein.' In Ház és ember 9 (1994): 175-194., and Judit Knézy, ‘Erdélyi Mór és a mezőgazdasági munkásházak fényképsorozat.’ In Fotó és néprajzi muzeológia. Tanulmányok. Tabula könyvek 6. Ed.: Fejős Zoltán (Budapest, 2004), 83-103. 2 Knézy, ‘Erdélyi Mór’ 83-103. 3 Lajos Győri, Ki kicsoda a magyar fotográfiában. Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Történeti Fényképtár Fotótörténeti Dokumentáció: Erdélyi Mór. (MNM TF) 4 Károly Kincses, ‘A Magyarország album fényképésze’ MNM TF. 5 Judit Baráti, ‘Erdélyi Mór élete és munkássága.’ Fotóművészet 5—6 (1997). 6 Kincses, MNM TF. 7 Zsuzsanna Demeter, ‘Erdélyi Mór.’ MNM TF. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibolya Cs. Plank, ‘Fényképészműtermek Budapesten.’ http://bfl.archivportal.hU/id-226-cs_plank_ibolya:fenykepeszmutermek.html, also Budapesti Negyed 15 (Spring 1997): 6-105. о-----|-4§f
