Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Kinses Károly: Egy kis akt-tipológia / A Sort of Nude Typology

phy, the "exotic" photographs of Bedouin, black, mulatto, and Creole natives became favourites among collectors of unusual, novel and exotic nude photographs. There was much Hungarian involvement in this area. In 1868, János Xántus took part in an Austro-Hungarian expedition to the Far East, collecting and photographing in Ceylon, Java, Borneo, and Siam. Some of his photographs are held in Budapest's Museum of Ethnography. Sámuel Teleki took photographs during his expedition to Africa in 1888-89. Several books were written about this, and they included reproductions of photographs. In 1895, Lajos Bíró, curator at the Hungarian National Museum, photographed the Papuans. All three Hungarians were working with ethnographic goals in mind. In their wake, researchers, hunters and ethnographic collectors brought home similar photographs. Such travellers included Ferenc Hopp, György Almásy, Lajos Lóczy, Jenő Cholnoky, Kálmán Kittenberger, Count Jenő Zichy, and Count Zsigmond Széchenyi. In photographs of naked natives they wished to show members of civilizations that were radically different from their own, instead of stressing the beauty or aesthetic quality of the bodies. There is at least one series among these photographs that implies some eroticism: Rudolf Festetich's series of naked and half-naked women in the Society Islands, Tahiti. Artistic nude photos of a pictorial quality from 1 900 to the present day The famous Budapest photographer Master Angelo declared that a really good photographer could turn the most delicate posture or pose into a photograph and at the same time remain within the bounds of artistic good taste. According to this principle, nearly all the nudes photographed for artistic or artful purposes were placed in emphatically artistic/artificial poses lifted clear of everyday life. Female models were almost without exception shown as nymphs, fairies, mermaids, or shy virgins, while male models were fate-stricken martyrs, heroes, slaves, or Christs on the Cross. It was amateur photographers who prevented the total commercialisation of photography, with the help of special procedures that produced unique photographs. As these pictorial techniques were ill suited to the mass production of pictures on commercial themes, the end products were individual pictures that were similar to paintings, in their philosophy also. The models were in rigid classical poses and were almost always women, most of them turning their backs or covered up, taking pains not to arouse erotic thoughts in anyone. Also, there were meticulously calculated, sophisticated light effects, along with shadows and restrained, mostly monochrome, colours. Careful composition and depiction featured, as .in graphic works. It is no accident that the history of photography as an autonomous art begins with amateur photography, as opposed to the other branches of photography. In the early 1900s, in parallel with the strengthening of the amateur movement, exhibitions, competitions and lectures multiplied in which nude photographs in styles dictated, expected or tolerated by the age increased in number and also received social legitimation. This exerted a positive influence on the development of the genre of nude photographs. Who photographed nudes at this time? It was the progressive masters who did so, professional photographers such as József Pécsi, Angelo, Aladár Székely, Dénes Rónai, Kálmán Szöllősy, József Sommer, Géza Szakái, Károly Demeter, Irén Werner, Olga Máté, and Mimi Beck, as well as gentlemen of notable social position who were members of photography clubs: the bank official Zoltán Kiss, Judge Tibor Rehák, the company deputy director Dezső Feledy, the engineer Béla Tomcsányi, Baron Béla Purcell, and many others. Saucy picture postcards, C.1 890-C.1935 It was the so-called nude allegories that did most to discredit artistic nudes. The pictures of affected poses usually on themes borrowed from nature or mythology appeared towards the end of the 19th century. Allegories of winter, spring, summer and autumn, Leda and the Swan and the Rape of Europa used their themes to disguise the representation of nudity and to present the photographer as an artist and not as an enthusiast for naked female bodies. The aim to create a cult of piquant, erotic postcards in unprecedented numbers of copies was obvious. A saucy postcard is a piece of cardboard of fixed size (140 X 190 mm at this time) that was printed on its reverse and forwarded by post, sometimes without an envelope, and that showed an undressed or lightly dressed person. It was produced and duplicated photographically in many copies and sold at an affordable price, without special restrictions. The picture postcards born at the turn of the 20th century - including the ones on piquant, erotic themes - were the first important exemplars of mass culture. This, in turn, depended on mass production and unrestricted availability. Mass production is the key term here. The issuing of postage and bill stamps was a state monopoly, but the issuing of postcards was usually not, so resourceful businessmen were quick to realize the potential in postcards and plunged into marketing them. The saucy postcard is a milestone in the history of nude photography. It is the first successful attempt to satisfy mass demand for erotic pictures on a large scale. It is the forerunner of several 20th-century phenomena of mass culture. Apart from the quantity, the tacit social legitimation it implied was also of great importance: it could be purchased, sent and owned overtly. As a result, postcard publishers grew rich on the one hand and public tastes underwent certain liberalisation on the other. As they could be sent legally, even from one continent to another, nude pictures legitimised themselves. They became part of the public domain. The bulk of the saucy