Martin Munkácsi

[Márton Munkácsi, Márton Mermelstein] (Kolozsvar, Austro-Hungary, May 18, 1896 – New York, July 13, 1963)

One of the world-famous Hungarian photographers and the founder of a fashion photography genre – which reached its zenith in the work of Avedon. With his parents and six siblings, Márton Munkácsimoved to Budapest at the age of fourteen. He left the family home – still as Márton Mermelstein – when he was sixteen. He worked as a painter and decorator, but he also wrote poetry and tried his hand at amateur drama. He then became a journalist, illustrating his articles with his own photographs. At the age of eighteen, he was already publishing articles on a regular basis. Alongside his journalistic career, he took up portrait photography, opening several studios in Budapest. From 1924 he took sport photographs for publications such as Est, Pesti Naplу, and Dйlibáb. As a sport photographer he attempted to produce novel and unusual compositions. Sometimes he would even climb onto a roof or up a fire ladder to ensure that his pictures were out of the ordinary. In 1928, he moved to Berlin; he was replaced at the Pesti Naplу by Károly Escher. Having joined Ullstein Verlag, he became a fast-moving photojournalist who was always there when something happened. He photographed Zeppelin’s airship and produced portraits of Leni Riefenstahl and Kemal Ataturk. While still in Hungary, he formulated his ideas about photojournalism: “To see within a thousandth of a second the things that indifferent people blindly pass by – this is the theory of the photo reportage. And the things we see within this thousandth of a second, we should then photograph during the next thousandth of a second – this is the practical side of the photo reportage.” In 1934, in the face of growing fascism, Munkácsiemigrated to the United States, where he soon became New York’s highest-paid photojournalist. His fashion photography for Harper’s Bazaar,  Fortune, and Vogue rendered him the founder of a new style: it was he who brought motion and dynamism to this genre. John Esten referred to this style as the “Munkácsi movement”. He died of a heart attack while watching a football match.