The black-and-white photographs of Péter Korniss—Hungarian photographer and humanitarian artist - trace the everyday stories of villagers in rural Hungary and Transylvania. From starkly beautiful portraits to stunning, expansive landscapes, Korniss’ lens captures disappearing ways of life, and bears witness to the transformation of the countryside after 1989.

Korniss’ photographs focus on the village folk, industrial workers, children, and the elderly of Hungary and Transylvania. Through Korniss’ eyes, we learn about, and grow a fondness for, 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."

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 the 1990s, "...  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 eyecatching. The symbols of distant worlds arrived in peasant homes."
The ’Attachment’ exhibition features forty large-scale black-and-white photographs, including photos from Korniss’ book Attachment 1967-2008 (Fresno Fine Art Publications), which records more than forty years of disappearing peasant way of life and culture. We are pleased to host the artist at the opening event on April 15, 2010.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Péter Korniss worked for the women’s weekly Nők Lapja from 1961 until 1991 and was picture editor for the theatrical monthly Színház 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 Péter Korniss was awarded the Pulitzer Memorial Prize. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Hungarian government.

Source: Hungarian Cultural Center