(Pál Funk, Budapest, January 31, 1894 – Budapest , 1974)
Pál Funk, or to use his professional name, Angelo, is a significant figure
in the world of 20th century Hungarian photography, a photographer himself,
a cameraman and a fashion designer. He came from a family of Italian artists,
his great-grandfather, Alessandro Angelo, being the man who painted the frescoes
in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.
After leaving the Munich painterschool run by Carl Bauer, he studied and
worked in the most prominent studios of Germany, London and Paris. In Budapest
he was the senior apprentice in Aladár Székely’s studio. From 1926 he was
a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great-Britain. He received over
100 awards and honours. After from 1945 he was a head of MADOME, in 1956 was
one of the founders of the Association of Hungarian Photographers.
Previously, until 1914 he had worked as a fashion and costume designer in
Paris. In 1916 he was the assistant director and cameraman for Mihály Kertész.
Later on he worked on films of the Franco-British Film Corporation and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
alongside such people as Rex Ingram, Erich Rohmer and Fritz Lang.
From 1919 he had his own photographic studio in Budapest, then in Paris,
Nice and various German cities. While working as a studio photographer, he
photographed nearly 450 000 people, he was the number one photographer of
the fashionable world. His photographs were exhibited at the most prestigeous
exhibitions winning him several international awards. His photographs were
published in over 40 foreign professional magazines, and he gave over 70 lectures
on the esthetics of modern photography, including portraiture and the nude.
In 1951 his Budapest studio was nationalised. From then on, he worked in the
Cooperative of Budapest Photographers ( later called FÉNYSZÖV ). His role
in the organization and teaching of his profession was profound.
His early photos are characterised by a picturesque style. Most of his large
bromine oil prints are now owned by the Hungarian Museum of Photography. Later
he started experimenting, with different distortions and chemical manipulation
he moved towards a more subjective form of expression, followed by a more
objective, realistic period. As he got older, he lost interest in portraits,
his favourite subjects became the abstract shapes and light effects emerging
from the tiny details of objects and textures.
Source: Károly Kincses + www.artportal.hu + Wikipedia
