One of the foremost representatives of Hungarian documentary photography, Kata Kálmán (1909-1978) turned to portraits of laborers and disadvantaged children in 1931, as soon as she began working with a camera.
One of the foremost representatives of Hungarian documentary photography, Kata Kálmán (1909-1978) turned to portraits of laborers and disadvantaged children in 1931, as soon as she began working with a camera. Several Hungarian photographers specialized in similar subjects in the 1930s, creating a community of politically committed photojournalists who wished to emphasize dignity in working-class people and pathos in their surroundings. In 1937 Kálmán published an album of twenty-four portraits titled Tiborc, the name of a character who personifies the Hungarian peasantry in the nationally celebrated novel Bánk Bán (1821). Widely reviewed, Kálmán's book cemented her reputation as an artist capable of putting a face, quite literally, on the suffering and inequity in modern industrial society.