Photographer returns to Esztergom after 40 years

After an exhibition of copies of his original photographs and reproductions, a workshop on his classic swimming photography and a book presentation about his life, on July 2, an exhibition of works by André Kertész was opened for followers and artistic friends in Esztergom. Roy Mittelman came from the United States, where he had met André Kertész several times in New York, with whom he maintained a good relationship and who must have influenced Mittelman's artistic inspiration.

Born in 1955, Mittelmann came to Esztergom with material that fills all three rooms of the exhibition, where the public can see his compositions that mainly depict New York and Paris. A large part of the black-and-white images will certainly be familiar to those who have seen photographs of New York, for example, so this time the figure of a man in a hat sitting alone in Central Park, pigeons grazing playfully on the banks of the Hudson River, or on the distinctive 42nd Street, the blurred vision of a crowd of people streaming under his giant advertisements.

However, Mittelmann brought something new to the small Hungarian town, as he recognized André Kertész, who knew Esztergom well, as his master, and the title of the exhibition also indicates this: Under the Charm of André Kertész. As revealed at the opening of the exhibition, the American photographer Kertész visited Esztergom several times in the 1980s in order to get to know the town, which was very popular and featured in the photographs of the legend of Hungarian photography.

The opening audience was also able to learn that Mittelmann had made many friends during his trip to Esztergom, the most notable of which was the relationship he developed with the then director of the Christian Museum, Pál Sefalvay. Thanks to this, he later exhibited his works at the Christian Museum, but he also had exhibitions in Paris, Washington, Marrakesh, Vienna, Brussels and Graz. At the exhibition in Esztergom on July 2, the audience learned that the foreign artist had visited Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Kosovo and Ukraine in the 1990s, where he naturally photographed everything that caught his eye.