I have posted a number of photos by Károly Vajszada from Fortepan in recent weeks, and they have been well received. So I did a bit of digging on who exactly Károly Vajszada was. He was a Hungarian, born in what is now Slovakia, who was primarily a painter. Although he studied with the well-regarded János Vaszary in the 1920s, Vajszada's paintings are, to be blunt, pretty mediocre and wouldn't be regarded as collector's items. After WWII, where he was captured and imprisoned by the Soviets, he returned to Slovakia and lived with his mother until she died in 1965. He moved to Budapest and died there in 1977, aged 76. There is no record of where he is buried, which makes me a little sad.
But it is street photography that he is now known for. Over six hundred negatives were donated to Fortepan by a Zsolt Zsanda, who got the negatives from his father. Hungarian media were quick to claim Vajszada as the new 'Hungarian Vivian Maier’, which, while a little overblown, is a worthy comparison. The rawness, freshness, and spontaneity in his photos of everyday life in and around the small towns of Fiľakovo and Lučenec are a real sociological treasure of those times. I would add that Sándor Kereki, who I have also featured on my Fortepan posts, is another example of a 'rediscovered' Hungarian street photographers whose photos throw new light on life in mid-regime communist countries in central Europe.
You can see all of Vajszada's photos on Fortepan at the link below.
#fortepan #photography #StreetPhotography #Vajszada #Kereki #Maier #Slovakia #Hungary
https://fortepan.hu/en/photos/?photographer=Vajszada%20Károly