In Attachment, Peter Korniss, Hungarian documentary photographer and humanitarian artist, records for more than forty years the disappearing peasant way of life and culture. He focuses on the village folk, industrial workers, children and the old people of Hungary and Transylvania and through his eyes, we become fond of these people and their culture. “To preserve a way of life that will soon disappear!” As a photographer I couldn’t have found a better task for myself. The gift of photography is that we can preserve even the most ephemeral subject: man – in the world he created and in which he lives.”
Beginning in 1967, Korniss noted that “in the dim light of a ‘dance house’ in Szek, … it was as if nothing had changed here in this tiny Transylvanian village for a hundred years. Yet, by the beginning of the1990s, “… after the political landslide in East Europe, the life of the old, familiar villages began to change before my eyes. The changes came swiftly and were eye-catching. The symbols of distant worlds arrived in peasant homes.”
Peter Korniss worked for the women’s weekly Nok Lapja, from 1961 until 1991, and was Picture Editor for the theatrical monthly Szinhaz between 1991 and 1999. A freelance photographer since 1999, Korniss’ photographs have been seen in international magazines including National Geographic, Geo Magazine, Fortune, Time, and Forbes. Exhibitions of his work have been held in galleries and museums in sixteen countries. In 2004 Peter Korniss was awarded the Pulitzer Memorial Prize.
Published in Hungary by Helikon Publishing House, Budapest
Distributed by Fresco in cooperation with the University of New Mexico Press
Size: 11 x 9 in.
Pages: 288
Plates: 215 halftones
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-963-227-167-5
Price: $75