PhotoBrussels Festival: Tell Your Story

The Liszt Institute Brussels presents two exhibitions in collaboration with the Association of Hungarian Photographers during the PhotoBrussels Festival: Connected and Tell your Story

The photos of the exhibitions are selected from the series called Contemporary Hungarian Photography 2024 created by the Association of Hungarian Photographers.

Tell your story

The photo exhibition highlights the powerful storytelling ability of photography, with each image capturing a unique narrative. Through evocative compositions, the photos transcend mere visual beauty, delving into the emotions, experiences, and moments behind them. From intimate portraits to sweeping landscapes, every picture tells a story, inviting viewers to interpret and connect with the deeper meaning behind the scenes. This collection emphasizes how photography can convey complex emotions, historical contexts, and human experiences, turning each frame into a window into another world.

The exhibition opening is followed by a discussion with
- Zsolt Hamarits, president of the Association of Hungarian Photographers, exhibiting phographer
- Imola Hitre, exhibiting phographer
- Márton Kállai, exhibiting phographer

The Association of Hungarian Photographers is the principal association for photography in Hungary. Since its foundation, the Association has been active in popularizing and researching Hungarian photography. It has supported the development of photographic culture in Hungary through its grants and awards.
With almost three hundred members, the Association comprises the leading exponents of Hungarian photographic art. Indeed, most of the Association’s members have been awarded art prizes in Hungary. Over the course of its six decades of existence, the Association’s membership has included such important figures in Hungarian photography as Angelo, Nándor Bárány, Cornell Capa, Károly Escher, Kata Kálmán, Gábor Kerekes, György Lőrinczy, Lucien Hervé, József Pécsi, Dénes Rónai and Ernő Vadas.
In 1977, the Association founded the Studio of Young Photographers, which it still operates. The Studio is the leading professional organization for young Hungarian photographers.
The tasks of the Association include the holding of photography exhibitions and professional events, as well as supporting the realization of the artistic goals of university students in Hungary by means of its scholarship programme. Founded in 2016, the scholarship programme – which was announced on the sixtieth anniversary of the Association’s founding – will, each year, offer three students studying at higher education institutions in Hungary opportunities to undertake creative work and present their work. The Association’s research programme supports the realization of research on Hungarian photography, embracing such disciplines as Aesthetics, Art History, Media Studies, Sociology and Economics.

Opening hours of the exhibition
23/01-21/02/2025
Opening event on 23/01/2025 at 7pm
Open on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26/01/2025 from 3pm-7pm
from 27/01/2025 open from Monday to Thursday between 10am and 5pm, and on Fridays between 10am and 3pm

Photo workshop by Barnabás Horváth from the Association of Hungarian Photographers - 20/02/2025, 2-6pm - REGISTRATION
Learn from an award-winning photographer how capture the beauty of Brussels.

Exhibiting artists

Attila BALOGH is an award-winning photographer based in Shanghai. Born in Hungary, he's been living in China for over two decades. Besides landscape, architecture and street photography, he's doing editorial and event photography for an international clientele. His photos have been featured in Elle, GEO, The Independent, Time, The Guardian, London Evening Standard, Business Insider, MSN, Conde Nast Traveler, Daily Mail, Financial Times, South China Morning Post, Shanghai Daily, China Daily and other major publications. Panasonic Ambassador, member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers

László Gábor BELICZA (1991) portrait photographer. He graduated from the University of Kaposvár in 2016, majoring in Photographic Design. In 2016, his first photo essay (Whole, 2012-2016) was selected by FotoRoom as one of the 10 most outstanding photo projects of the year. His portraits are profound and empathetic, exploring the most intimate layers of the personality. In 2019, he published his first solo photo album, 10 Years of Live Music, which includes 92 portraits of musicians with a Hungarian connection.

Anita BECZE, from 2015, attended a private tutor for three years, and from 2018 to 2021 she studied and graduated from the Spirit Image Free School of Photography. In 2021 she also obtained the qualification of Photographer and Photographic Product Dealer. She often choose portraits or photo essays as the subject of my photographs. She is interested in people, their motivations, their joys, their sorrows, their choices, their lives, birth and death. She takes photos. With heart. With soul.

Balázs CSIZIK (b. 1987, Székesfehérvár, Hungary) is a contemporary artist based in Budapest represented by Ani Molnár Gallery. He received his MA degree in Visual Communication (Budapest University of Technology and Economics), where he is now a Lecturer in the fields of visual communication, and urbanism. He is an internationally exhibited artist represented by the Ani Molnár Gallery, and is a member of the Hungarian Photographers Association and the Young Photographers Studio. Balázs combines his visual language through photo based works and conceptual installations, with a focus on urbanist and social thinking. His artistic vision is inspired by modern urban living environments, architecture, and art genres like constructivism and new topographics.

Ildikó FELICIDES graduated from ELTE in 1993 as photographer. She worked at the De-Max Photo Lab, while studying at the courses of Gábor Kerekes and György Stalter. From 2002 she worked as a photo lab technician in Canada for a year and then in Hungary, while developing her professional skills in workshops with Gábor Kerekes and Magdolna Vékás and participating in research on the history of photographic techniques. She has presented her work in several solo and group exhibitions. In 1998 and 2000 she won prizes at the Esztergom Photography Biennale. Her works are in the collection of the Hungarian Museum of Photography.

Zsolt HAMARITS (1966, Pécs - ) photographer, owner of Hamarits Photo Studio. Teacher of photographer in several schools (Budapest Service and Crafts Training School, NOVUS Art School, Szellemkép Free School) and worked as laboratory manager at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. Member of Studio of Young Photographers Hungary since 1990, member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 1993 (presidency member from 2015).

László HARIS, from the 1960s, László Haris was present at the Szürenon exhibitions and at the Balatonboglár chapel exhibitions, which often caused a storm in art politics. For ten years he only exhibited his photographs at art exhibitions, mostly together with neo-avant-garde artists. Between 1973 and 1980, due to the limited exhibition opportunities, he created conceptual works and performances alone or with his artist friends Sándor Csutoros, József Molnár V. and György Szemadám.

László HEGEDŰS 2 (Nagyhalász, 1950 - ) artist, photographer, movie director. By his photos he does not seize, but creates the moment. (Péter Esterházy, 2004, Hungarian Museum of Photography). Member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 1999.

Imola HITRE (Mohács, 25 October 1996): Photography for her is a means of self-expression, a means of understanding the world and life. Her interest and work focus on her own impressions of the world and the relationships between individual and social experiences, and her aim is to express these themes in a unique way. Alongside this, she is interested in the possibility of integrating photography into the genre of street art, thus experimenting with genre boundaries.

M. Judit HORVÁTH, born into a culturally assimilated Roma family, she worked as a paediatric nurse in Budapest for many years. She started taking photographs professionally in 1985, learning her craft from György Stalter, who instilled in her the importance of taking a pride in her ethnicity and her responsibility to use her gifts to improve the situation of Hungary’s Roma community. Between 1990 and 1995 she was picture editor and photojournalist at the Roma magazine Amaro Drom, and later its editor-in-chief. In 1994, she and her husband won the Essay Award in the Hungarian Press Photography Competition. Over a period of more than ten years they photographed the lives of people in Hungary’s rural Gypsy slums and the ghettoised districts of Budapest. Their joint album Another World was published in 1998. Between 1998 and 2020 her pictures featured in eight solo and numerous group exhibitions from New York to Sárvár. She is a member of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists and the Association of Hungarian Photographers. She was presented with the Balogh Rudolf Award in 2016.

Lajos KALMÁR is the author of forty-three photo albums and has contributed to the publication of more than twenty other volumes. He has also produced a large number of posters, catalogues, billboards, calendars and postcards in great numbers both in and outside of Hungary.

Péter KORNISS (Kolozsvár, 1937 - ) documentary photographer. He worked as a photojournalist and as an art director at the Nők Lapja / Woman’s Magazine for decades. After that, he was a photo editor at the Színház / Theatre magazine. He has been working as a freelance photographer since 1999, besides, he teaches at the University of Theatre and Film. The main field of his work is related to the documental representation of the disappearing Transylvanian and Hungarian peasant lifestyle. Since 1966, he has been a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers.

Katalin LONDON (Szeged, 1959 - ) freelancer photographer, she publishes interior images for leading national magazines (SzépLak, Otthon, Lakáskultúra, Oktogon). She has been a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers and Association of Hungarian Journalists since 2013

Zoltán MÓSER was born in 1946 in Szekszárd, Tolna County. From 1965 to 1970 he was a student of Hungarian History at ELTE and a resident of the Eötvös Dormitory. In 1969, his first photo exhibition with Transylvanian themes opened in the Eötvös College. In 1970-71 he worked in several jobs, among others at the Museum of Ethnography. From September 1971 - for almost three decades - he was a teacher at the College of Fine and Applied Arts. In the meantime, he was invited to the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Cluj for three years as a visiting lecturer in film, photography and media. In 2011 he became a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. In 2016, at the age of 70, he returned to his native Tolna County.

Attila MUDRÁK, art photographer, was the guest of the Helischer József Municipal Library's "They live among us" programme on 20 February. In addition to works of art, Attila Mudrák's pictures show the sacral and cultural heritage of the Carpathian Basin and the relationship between architecture and landscape.

Lenke SZILÁGYI is a photographer born in Debrecen, Hungary. She completed a degree on Arts and Crafts Vocational Sixth Form College, in 1980, with an A-level in photography and she has been making a living as a theatre and film stills photographer since 1985. Throughout her career she has worked in more than 25 Hungarian films.

István SZIRÁNYI (Kaposvár, 1951 - ) graphic artist, photographer, the conceptual avant-garde aspirations affected his works. The Young Artists' Studio member in the 1980s. He is a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 1985.

János SZITA (1975, Budapest) photographer takes photos since 1993. In his works he deals with man-made creations and passing, changig of them. Member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 2017.

Zoltán TOMBOR was born in Budapest, When he turned 19, he started to develop a budding interest for photography. From the beginning, it made him excited that the camera not only immortalized the details of images, but also helped him to recall his personal feelings present at the moment of taking the picture. Photography appeared to him as emotionally charged. Once he understood how to manipulate, tame and use these emotions residing in the image, he started to work on photo assignments in Budapest. After a few years of self-education and training, he decided to move to Milan, and introduce his work to a wider audience. Then he moved to New York in 2011, then after 9 years of joy and struggles, he finally returned home to Hungary.

András TUMBÁSZ (Vác, 1956 - ) photographer, he primarily creates pictures motivated by the lyrical poetry. He actively participates in the photographical art life of his hometown. He has been a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers, since 1994.

Zoltán VADÁSZI (Eger, 1983 - ) photographer, fine art photographer since 2003. He started out as a commercial photographer but today he is more into conceptual photography. In 2006 he begun to turn to analogue technics that he uses exclusively in recent years. He is a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers since 2016.

Domonkos Varga (b. 1998) is a photographer and conceptual artist based in Budapest. His work portrays the influential socioeconomic and socio-political elements of the world around him and his generation. Varga’s conceptual approach rests on deconstructing various social phenomena and ideologies through the medium of photography. His projects continually feature a critical stance on global issues, and he composes visual examinations of them. He studied Photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (Budapest) and at Aalto University School of Arts and Design (Helsinki). He is a Parallel Photo Platform 3rd cycle artist and a member of the Studio of Young Photographers (FFS) in Budapest.

Tamás VARGA (Debrecen, 1969 - ) doctor, photographer, he dealt with historical photography technics. In recent years, he exclusively creates pictures with wet-collodion technique. For him, this process has become the natural way of taking photos. The member of the MAOE- National Association of Hungarian Artists’ Photography Division, he was admitted to the Association of Hungarian Photographers in 2007.