Balkan University Shoumen — Mihály Dömötör photo exhibition

Mihály Dömötör's photo exhibition titled Balkan University Shoumen was opened at the SZAB Székház, the local office of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on Friday last week.

At the opening of the exhibition, Dömötör explained that he was inspired by one hundred Lucien Hervé photographs purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts from Hervé's widow in 1910. Dömötör saw these photographs and then traveled to Shoumen — lying halfway between Sofia and Varna — where a linguistics conference was held. He photographed the conference and during the breaks, he found a concrete installation in the yard and began to photograph it in the style of Lucien Hervé.

Hervé, a Hódmezővásárhely-born artist, photographed concrete buildings. As Dömötör told participants of the exhibition opening, he just could not take bad pictures with the Hervé method during the breaks of the conference in Shoumen, and these photos are now on display.

Mihály Dömötör, also born in Hódmezővásárhely, worked as an artifact photographer at the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged between 1980 and 2015. As he writes in his introduction, he is interested in how things exist in time as well as how they can be captured through photography.

"This exhibition pays tribute to the memory of the world-famous photographer of exceptional talent. I hope the exhibition, an individual mixture of the general and the specific, will provide a lasting experience to its visitors."

The Balkan University Shoumen photo exhibition can be visited free of charge until April 7, every day between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the SZAB Székház.

Photos: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify