Bardoly István - Cs. Plank Ibolya szerk.: A „szentek fuvarosa” Divald Kornél felső-magyarországi topográfiája és fényképei 1900-1919. (Forráskiadványok Budapest, 1999)

ABSTRACT

in them, and also some technical details of their exposures. It was with the help of these notebooks that we could get to know the exact dates and exposure times of a number of his photos, especially the ones taken between 1902 and 1907. Under the open sky he normally used a few seconds' exposure time, while in the interior of the churches he sometimes worked with an exposure time of several hours, depending on the conditions of light. Exposure time, especially in interiors of churches, also depended on the distance between the camera and the object being photographed. His mission is very well justified, as his publications, descriptions of historic monuments and the related photographic material are not only the evidence of the (in some cases unfortunately former) existence of the items, but also provide us with descriptions of their state and value. However, these photo-series are only apparently objective. Besides objectivity, Divald considered accentuating beauty equally important. Portraits of Madonna sculptures of the 15

th-17

th centuries and ethnographic photos of costumes are evidence of this. The last phase of his career as a photogtapher was as a war correspondent, taking photos at the front and the devastation of war in Sáros county. Evaluating his photographic heritage, the question inevitably arises as to what préfigurations he might have had before his eyes while visiting several thousands of settlements and making a photo-documentation of mote than a thousand historic monuments. Going through the material he has left for us we can very well suppose that, being impressed by the objects and the buildings, he did not consider it necessary to use the tricks the photographic ateliers of his time. Divald's photos are not only worth looking at, but the expert eye can also read a lot from them.