Bardoly István - Cs. Plank Ibolya szerk.: A „szentek fuvarosa” Divald Kornél felső-magyarországi topográfiája és fényképei 1900-1919. (Forráskiadványok Budapest, 1999)
ABSTRACT
AB STRACT In our times, when we are flooded with printed and electronic photos, the importance of photo archives with collections of original negatives and copies has greatly increased. On the one hand, they preserve the memories of buildings and objects which may disappear and, on the other make masterpieces and the other objects accessible. To re-discover these collections it is necessary not only to get to know their history and the way they have been built up but also to understand how, why and who has worked in the field of photography since it was invented. Besides the professional photographers, a great number of other people contributed to the development of architectural photography in Hungary who, being experts in certain fields and topics, made or collected photos for their work in archaeology or art history. If you go through the book you are holding in your hand you can come to know not only a major part of the mediaeval artistic heritage of Upper Northern Hungary (before 1920, presently part of Slovakia, Felvidék in the rest of the text), but also the way documentary photogtaphy became a medium of the history of art, through the eye and the camera of the art historian Kornél DIVALD (1872-1931). Between 1900 and 1919 Divald travelled around 14 counties of the Felvidék, and compiled the topography of historic monuments of 7 of them: Szepes, Sáros, Liptó, Bars, Hont, Trencsén, Zólyom, Túróc axvc\ Gömör. As a result of his recording and research work he saved several hundreds of objects of art — mainly church property- either by acquiring them in the name of the state as gifts, by exchanging them for other items or by buying them and then having them transported to museums. His registers of historic monuments of the Felvidék — both movable property and real estate have survived as a thick volume of manuscripts in the library of the National Committee on Historic Monuments ("Műemlékek Országos Bizottsága", MOB in the following), the present Hungarian National Board for the Protection of Historic Monuments ("Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal", OMvH in the following). They are catalogued under the title "Felső-Magyarországi ingó- és ingatlan műemlékek lajstroma" (A Register of Movable and Real Estate Historic Monuments in Upper Northern Hungary) . The associated photos have now been stored in the photo archives of the OMvH for 90 years. It was by the cross-check of the two materials (the manuscripts and the photos) and the relevant documents that we have been able to reconstruct the activity of Kornél Divald as a topographer and photographer. Having done this, it also became evident that photography and the written text had an equal role and were equally important for the author. According to the original plans the manuscripts of Divald would have been published under the title "A Register of the Historic Monuments of Hungary" ("Magyarország műemékeinek lajstroma"), which in the edition of MOB, would have been in the form of a handbook containing both photographs and the relevant descriptions. However, this could not have been achieved after the end of World War I. After 1919 Divald collected no further material in the Felvidék, and, until his death, worked in Budapest as a member of the Department of Collections of the Hungarian National Museum. He wrote a travel book based on his adventurous journeys to the remost parts of the Felvidék under the title "Roaming around the Felvidék" ("Felvidéki séták") in 1925. The direction of his career and its most important elements are inseparable both from his homeland, Sdros county, and his own family traditions. In the 19 th century his father, Károly Divald Sen., was the best-known landscape photographer of the country, as well as being the owner of several photographic ateliers and photo-reprographic printing offices. His photos taken of the High Tatra, the Carpathians and the neighbouring small towns
