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A project for all photographers
Nagymezô utca, itself a funny-sounding name, is an obvious translation from "Grossfeld Strasse". it's a mere 200 meter long cross-street of the mighty avenue Andrássy út, ridiculously nicknamed "The Broadway of Pest", since there used to be three theatres, two cabarets and one cinema, half of which are closed down now. At 20 Nagymezô utca there is a magical narrow five-story building which is 102 years old.
For more and more people it is becoming known as the "House of Mano Mai", the future Budapest Centre of Photography. The lavishly ornamented building was originally built for a fashionable portrait photographer, whose old fashioned and funny name can be translated as "Today's Goblin."
Behind the French Renaissance revival facade was the home and offices of the photographer, and on top of the house there is (still) a "sunlight studio" - a room with glass walls and roof. The photographer, Mr Today, "imperial and royal court photographer" received his upper-middle-class clients in bow-tie and an elegant three-piece suit. He was both an artist and a psychologist, who produced the public effigies of a caste. After 1918, when the original owner died, it served first as the home of another photographer, then a subsequent owner covered the yard and built the Arizona Cabaret, a Budapest legend (1932-44.) The undistinguished part of the story of the building ended last August, when the Budapest Automobile Club moved out, demanding a fat check for the long overdue favor of vacating the premises.
His Museum of Photography is in the country town of Kecskemét, about 100 kilometers south-east of Budapest, in a specially-converted synagogue, a frequent destination for egghead pilgrimage. Its archive includes about 270,000 items, daguerrotypes, glass plates, negatives and prints, mainly works by Hungarian photographers at home and abroad.
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András Török