Dr. Kubassek János: Cholnoky Jenő természetábrázoló művészete (Érd, 2002)

Judit Berta Varga: Jenő Cholnoky as Photographer - His relationship with photography

JUDIT BERTA-VARGA JENŐ CHOLNOKY AS PHOTOGRAPHER HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH PHOTOGRAPHY ^CW. rom the aspect of the development of photography, Jenő Cholnoky took Iiis vr^x first camera into his hands in such a fortunate era, when photography became a widespread and popular activity - due to Maddox's invention and to the new Kodak machines. Photography recorded the passing moments as well. That moment, which meant for Cholnoky the visual fixing of his field-works, the scientific documentation of experience gathered during his journeys. He already developed a sensitivity to visual representation in Iiis schooldays. He quickly recognized the educational power of high-quality illustrations and their function in popularizing science. Turning the pages of Ebers' Egyiptom {Egypt) and the Az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia írásban és képekben {Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Writing and Pictures) - volumes, he came to a conclusion which determined his whole further documentary activity. Seeing the artistic or, on the contrary, poor quality of the wood engravings made from the photographs, he pledged himself to qualitative representation against poor cheap works. "How ugly are those landscapephotographs, which are published in scientific studies or in books nowadays. The photograph is not good enough, and the reproduction is of very poor quality. They can hardly teach a lesson anyone. Because such landscape photographs report without selection what the camera has seen, and these involve large amounts of redundant details which just cover up what we really want to show. For the artist is like a microphone. He can 'hear' the beauty in nature which the amateur cannot, and then the artist transforms himself into a megaphone when he represents clearly and obviously the recognized beauty - enlarged and purifiedfrom overtones. This is the artist's task. That is real art. This also has to happen with scientific pictures. The scientist realizes one of the interesting shapes of the terrain, which the amateur cannot, and then he - if really has a sense for teaching - picks out the realized thing from among the uninteresting details and represents it in a strongly o o