Thursday, July 28, 2011

ArtTraveler photo gallery: EasyJet victim finds serendipity in London



"Thinking on the Tube" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Framed" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Serendipity" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Feet Therapy" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"No Photos" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"The Circle Grows Bigger" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Picasso's Ghost" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Malcolm" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Man Watching Women" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"The Horse Hospital" Photograph by Stefan van Drake f(2011)
"If you're late, we won't wait."


True to its word, EasyJet denied me check-in from my Budapest flight at Gatwick linking me with Malaga and my home in Canillas de Albaida, al Andalus in Spain.


I was 10 minutes late for check-in (another story).


I talked to people 5 minutes late or who had suffered worse brutalities at the hands of the "budget" airline.

OK, another 50 quid to re-book two days later, 240 quid for two nights in the Grange Whitehall Hotel near Russell Square, a nicely appointed prison cell.


But I'm not bitter.


EasyJet offered opportunities to walk and wander London's streets--in various parts of the metropolis--day and night.


I share a few of my images with you. I am both poorer and richer.


Much of life is serendipity.


"Woman on Double-decker" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"What We Leave Behind" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Last Night's Memories" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Woman Reading with Flowers" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Aristocratic Reflections" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Happy Campers" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
"Lights in Perspective" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
(I dedicate this photo gallery to my flaneur soul mates Katona Betti and Hajtmanszki Zoltan.)







Rock on and practice peace and love.
Stefan, the ArtTraveler ™

ArtTraveler note:

After living at the Hotel Queen Mary in Budapest (3.5 stars), I heartily recommend it: old on the outside, otherwise totally modern (23 rooms); it's an extremely excellent value. (I'm not getting a discount for this...it's my idea because it is what it is.)

The owner and staff are affable and speak English and German. Tel: 0036-1-413-3510; www.hotelqueenmary.hu; info@hotelqueenmary.hu.

There's a generous buffet breakfast that comes with the room, and everything in Budapest is close to you.

Visit Andalusia for a walking holiday or week-long sculpture or mosaics workshop. See: www.spanjeanders.nl and www.competafinearts.com.

"Spanish life stilled," photograph by Stefan van Drake (2009)


ArtTraveler´s video: an interview with Scottish illustrator and painter, Gordon Wilson, about his "I Love Fish" exhibition, inspired by a commissioned mural he did 13 years ago for a West Glasgow gangster, who loved supporting writers and artists as well as organized crime.

You may reach me at stefanvandrake@gmail.com or by calling (34) 915 067 703 or from the UK at BT landline rates, 0844 774 8349.
 










Tuesday, July 26, 2011

ArtTraveler photo gallery: the people I leave behind, but who remain with me


I arrived in Budapest a blank canvas.
I leave as a colorful palette, a collage of personalities who impacted me deeply--fusion art.
We become our experiences; we paint on our psyche.
As I return to Spain 26 July, having arrived in Hungary on 17 June, I leave these giving and generous, intelligent, talented and compassionate people behind.
But they are always with me. 
This is the epiphany of travel and social intercourse, universal forces bonding us as humans. 
And I am forever bonded with Hungary and those people who made it possible for me to write their stories, including others whose pictures I did not take but whose contributions loom large like Reka Deim, good friends Adam, Akos and Kinga, who introduced me to the Budapest underground.
And Raymond at the Barladino, whose intelligence and humanity I will always admire and remember.
It will take months to figure out what happened to me here. 
While I searched for the Hungarian soul, I also sought my own to redefine my role as a human being for what time remains on this planet.
This quest continues unabated, although most of it I must accomplish through phone interviews and wonders of the Internet as funds are very limited.
But not my spirit or my will or my intensity.
Each of these people painted something on that blank canvas, left a footprint, an impression, created lasting images. 
They gave freely of themselves.
All but three I knew cara a cara, face to face, some more intensely than others.
The three people whose images and lives remain a wonder and who for me are blank canvases on which I shall think and paint are the old man sitting in the milleu of what was billed as a violent anti-gay pride parade protest at Oktogon Square in Budapest on 18 June.
He self-published his memoirs as an Hungarian slave laborer in the Soviet Gulag, one of few who survived Stalin's horrific regime.
He shared his story, solemnly and quietly while madness raged around him.
Was he the real protest, a silent beacon against extremism?
The second is a white-bearded man with a broadly carved face time did not forget to mark with its humanity and no doubt pain. 
He stood for a couple of hours through the dedication ceremony of a bronze statue of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, unveiled and hearalded at Heroes Square in Budapest in June.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, he quietly took out a small, older American flag and waved it once or twice, slowly, deliberately, then quietly put it away, out of sight.
But not out of mind. 
His gesture appeared genuine, unrehearsed.











The third, a solitary woman who frequented the same bench in the Old Jewish Quarter of Budapest (7th District).
She appeared linked to the life of pigeons in this small park memorializing 63,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims, feeding these birds.

And then there are the two goats, Tunde (phon. Toon-day), nicknamed Uzike (Oo-zee-ke), pictured left in my photo, with her son, Csongor (pron. Chun-gor). (Both names are Hungarian poetic figures.)
I've become good friends with them, especially Uzike.
In February or earlier, I return to Szentendre (20 kilometers north of Budapest) for a month. 
Documentary art photographers Katona Betti and Hajtmanszki Zoltan and two of their three children will live in my home in the mountains of Andalusia, I in theirs.
Ozike and I will become much closer as I will be milking her four or five times daily.
Each day in this troubled nation of brilliant intellectuals and artists, I experienced a new color, a different brush stroke and a lasting impression. 

Budapest contemporary sculptor Villo Turcsany Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Hajtmanszki  Barnabas (Barnus) Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Contemporary painter and sculptor  Csizmadi Balazs
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Hajtmanszki Rebeka Klara (Beki) reading a book at home Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Edina Deme, art historian for the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, and her best new friend, puppy Machow (phon.)
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)


"Woman on Bench Contemplating Pigeons" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Ocztos Istvan, President of the Kuratorium
Photograph by Stefan van Van Drake (2011)

Uncle Bela, renown, well-respected poet from Szentendre, a man for all seasons
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Ef Zambo Istvan, one of Hungary's most important artists with admirer in Szentendre
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Kecskes Robin, artist member of the Forgasz Group in Szentendere
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Ozike and her son, right, Csongor
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Szentendre artist and musician and drinking colleague, Zarubay Bence
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Kicsiny Balazs, Budapest-based internationally known contemporary sculptor and art academic
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

U.K. painter Andy Austin in Budapest, who organized on Facebook an exhibition of international artists to benefit cancer research at the Budapest Gallery 29 Kertesz Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
.
Documentary art photographer and flaneur Hajtmanszki Zoltan, a profound thinker and doer
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Documentary art photographer Katona Bernadette Marta (Betti) and flaneur. Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Hajtmanszki Betti-Szolans (Bindi), 18 months of humanity and love
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Szentendre gallerist Laszlo Erdesz Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Szentendre artist, writer and dramatist Fulop Andras
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Quiet senital against madness, selling self-published book on his life as slave lasborer in Soviet Gulag
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Fitz Peter, curator, museum director & Hungary's foremost expert on the nation's contemporary art
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Deim Balazs, photographer and member of the Szentendre Forgasz Group of  contemporary artists
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Acrylic painter Kuryi taking one of her poses at Gobo Sunday market, 7th District, Budapest
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Matthew Z. Zomick, Budapest-based New York poet and performance artist with Taco
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Gergely Barki, chief curator and organizer of "The Eight" exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Albrecht Emese, contemporary artist and fine art photographer; also, Hungary's hottest fashion designer
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Horst from Germany, who lives in Szentendre with his Hungarian lady & Harley
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)


Old man who quietly waved American flag at June dedication of Ronald Reagan statue, Hero's Square, Budapest
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Szentendre-based performance artist Kecskes Tibor
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)













Rock on and practice peace and love.
Stefan, the ArtTraveler ™

ArtTraveler note:

After living at the Hotel Queen Mary in Budapest (3.5 stars), I heartily recommend it: old on the outside, otherwise totally modern (23 rooms); it's an extremely excellent value. (I'm not getting a discount for this...it's my idea because it is what it is.)

The owner and staff are affable and speak English and German. Tel: 0036-1-413-3510; www.hotelqueenmary.hu; info@hotelqueenmary.hu.

There's a generous buffet breakfast that comes with the room, and everything in Budapest is close to you.

Visit Andalusia for a walking holiday or week-long sculpture or mosaics workshop. See: www.spanjeanders.nl and www.competafinearts.com.

"Spanish life stilled," photograph by Stefan van Drake (2009)


ArtTraveler´s video: an interview with Scottish illustrator and painter, Gordon Wilson, about his "I Love Fish" exhibition, inspired by a commissioned mural he did 13 years ago for a West Glasgow gangster, who loved supporting writers and artists as well as organized crime.

You may reach me at stefanvandrake@gmail.com or by calling (34) 915 067 703 or from the UK at BT landline rates, 0844 774 8349




Monday, July 25, 2011

Photographer Zoltan Hajtmanszki explores the world of the "flaneur"

Croatian refugee child with gun, Makiagyud, Hungary Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (1992)
"I am just a photographer who thinks with pictures. I don't make campaigns for changing the social landscape.

"I want to show what it is, what's happening; my profession is about thinking....making the public think about humanity."

--Zoltan Hajtmanszki (23 July 2011, Szentendre, Hungary)


Hajtmanszki Zoltan Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Until I experienced Hungarian photographer Hajtmanszki Zoltan (proper Hungarian word order) in Budapest and Szentendre--and a plethora of his works--I never realized I, too, was a flaneur.

Zoltan, age 49 and self-taught, an internationally known and exhibited documentary art photographer for more than 31 years, knows life and commercial success as a flaneur

On the back cover of his second book of black and white photographs--"Downtown Flaneur----the Hungarian documentary art photographer crafted his own definition of the French word. 


Both the term and its deeper meaning had eluded me.

But not Zoltan.


Hajtmanszki Zoltan in his studio, Szentendre, Hungary
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Here is Hajtmanszki Zoltan's artist's statement, his definition of a flaneur:

"Flaneur" is the French term for a roamer, a wanderer, a common Parisian figure at the turn of the last century, but flaneurs are everywhere in every giant modern city, for the flaneur is a professional walker who spends his days walking the streets of the capital.

The flaneur is a Bohemian, independent, generally an artist, but surely the most sensitive kind, one who looks at the whole of life as art.

These people have a feeling for their city, and they are standard elements of the cityscapes.

The flaneur observes the details of the landscape and makes notes of the city. 

Flaneurs are symbols of personal freedom. They are not pieces of the big machine, but somehow they can exist and be creative in it.

The flaneur is a lucky chosen one, living by improbably simple rules.

But the flaneur doesn't ask why he wanders so easily while everything else is so hard. 


The flaneur practices an uncertain profession and embraces it with an open heart. 

A student of human life, the flaneur sees reality in atmosphere.

The flaneur is a researcher of human views.

The flaneur's self-assigned task is not to understand or explain reality, but to display it, to record as many views of it as possible. 

These multiple views offer the flaneur a still but solid space for meditation, inspiring him to work.

What is this work for? Who knows? 

I don't know. I've never known. I'm a flaneur. I take my walks.

By Hajtmanszki Zoltan appearing on the back cover of "Downtown Flaneur," Exposed Books, Budapest, Hungary 2003 with English consultant, Arthur Phillips; hardcover edition of 200 of the artist's black and white images.


The Hajtmanszki Zoltan and Katona Betti (also a professional phtoographer)  studio
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Works of Zoltan and Betti ready for sale
Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)
Zoltan told me:


"I always wanted to be a documentary photographer on an art level, wanted to show human feelings and facts at the same time.

"This art level was always very important for me; as you see, i am trying to make my pictures in classic style with classic aestheticism. 

"Freedom is the key, the liberty of thinking is the key to understanding my life.

 "I didn't want lo step on other people's footprints. I wanted to make my own while observing others."












This post introduces Hajtmanszki Zoltan, who from age 18 has earned a living and a made a life as a photographer and flaneur.

More stories and images are headed our way, visual chapters in his life, each imbedded in ethos and pathos and context I shall attempt providing through our serial interviews.


Venice frame maker in workshop Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (2003)
Zoltan's works are in nine Hungarian public collections, including the Hungarian National Museum, Museum of Hungarian Theatre History, Budapest Historical Museum, Ministry of Interior, Refugee Department, Hungarian Museum of Photography.

He enjoys many private collectors. Five Budapest galleries represent him. 


He has participated in 12 group shows since 1964 and 14 solo exhibitions since 1966, five of them in France, two of those in Paris. 

He's an ArtTraveler extraordinaire, recording facts and human feelings in France, the United States, Italy, India, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Germany and extensively in Hungary.

He has published two additional books of his works, one of street life in Paris, the other about Balkan refugees in Hungary. He has also published two electronic/digital books of his works.

Zoltan recently signed a contract for a third print book with Sterling Publishing Co. of New York. His images shall complement prose by various writers on the subject of reading. No publishing date has been set.


Here are a few representative images of Zoltan's work:


Walking on the Chain Bridge, Budapest Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (2005)


Woman walking Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (1996) Castle district of Budapest


Metropolitan Ervin Szabo (Budapest library) Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (2008)


"The Teller" Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan, Varanasi, India (2009)


Religious service of refugees in Nagyatad, Hungary Photograph by Hajtmanszki Zoltan (1992)











Rock on and practice peace and love.
Stefan, the ArtTraveler ™

ArtTraveler note:

After living at the Hotel Queen Mary in Budapest (3.5 stars), I heartily recommend it: old on the outside, otherwise totally modern (23 rooms); it's an extremely excellent value. (I'm not getting a discount for this...it's my idea because it is what it is.)

The owner and staff are affable and speak English and German. Tel: 0036-1-413-3510; www.hotelqueenmary.hu; info@hotelqueenmary.hu.

There's a generous buffet breakfast that comes with the room, and everything in Budapest is close to you.

Visit Andalusia for a walking holiday or week-long sculpture or mosaics workshop. See: www.spanjeanders.nl and www.competafinearts.com.

"Spanish life stilled," photograph by Stefan van Drake (2009)


ArtTraveler´s video: an interview with Scottish illustrator and painter, Gordon Wilson, about his "I Love Fish" exhibition, inspired by a commissioned mural he did 13 years ago for a West Glasgow gangster, who loved supporting writers and artists as well as organized crime.

You may reach me at stefanvandrake@gmail.com or by calling (34) 915 067 703 or from the UK at BT landline rates, 0844 774 8349