Portrait and Group Photographs

In this part of the collection photos depicting the most important characters -both Hungarian and national- of the political, economical, and cultural scene. These can be studio photos, or photographed at some event, works of professional or amateur photographers.

The first items of the photo collection were portraits, not by chance, this being the dominant dominant genre of photography in the 19th century. Dagerrotypes in our collection are exclusivel portraits, maybe and in some cases group photographs.

Among the portraits there are forty dagerrotypes depicting important personalities identified by name. The dagerrotypes of Lajos Kossuth in London, Boston, and Cincinnati are widely known.

From the beginning of the 1860's, the number of small, call-card sized -teherefore called "visitcard picture" - photos started to increase. These pictures were relatively cheap, making it possible for a wider part of society to have a photo of them. From this time on, almost every prominent character of the cultural, economical and political scene has his portrait in the collection.

At the beginning of the 20th century a new type of portrait appeared: it emphasizes the most dominant personality traits of the photographed person - Ady, Babits, Margit Kaffka, Lajos Kassák - on the artistic works of Aladár Székely, Olga Máté, and Dénes Rónai.

From the 1930's, the Hungarian Film Bureau's photo department was increasingly active, mostly photographing politicians. After 1956, the Hungarian News Agency became the photographer of politicians. In the last decades the more formal portraits made by the HFB were replaced by more relaxed works of Demeter Balla, Edit Molnár and others. These pictures feature artists and authors photograpged outdoors or within their own quarters.

Group photos, also known as group portraits are considered belonging to the portrait collection, too. Besides the portraits made in studios, photos depicting two or three people together - where the event because of which the photo was made is unknown or irrelevant, but the people on the picture are important - are also in this group.

The number of catalogued portraits and group photographs is nearly forty thousand.