ALMÁSY, Paul - Zaungast der Zeitgeschichte

Backgroudn information

"Paul ALMÁSY visited Eisenhower, Nehru, Khrushchev, de Gaulle, Evita Peron, Mussolini or the Rezah Shah, MAN RAY photographed in his studio,
Alberto Giacometti in his regular café and Yves Saint Laurent drawing.

But his attention and lifeblood was devoted to everyday events and everyday human existence around the world.
For his famous reports, he crossed the Sahara, accompanied gold prospectors in Bolivia, studied the life and tradition of the Sinti and Roma in Eastern Europe,
reported on the collective farms of the USSR, traveled to Sri Lanka, Kuwait and Indonesia - according to his own statement, he was the only country missing Mongolia alone.

The result is a highly aesthetic oeuvre, the delicacy and style of which is based on the fact that ALMÁSY has always refused to capture what was intended, intentionally beautiful.
His photos are discrete revelations far beyond the edge of the picture. Paul ALMÁSY is there when a tribe gathers around the dying chief in Ivory Coast,
met a coffin vendor in Santiago de Chile, attended drug treatment for drug addicts in a Hong Kong prison, and came across all sorts of fetishes and medicines in a Benin market.

His photos include all human emotions and moods - it is his 'Archive of the World'." (free translated publisher's text, © Benteli Verlag, 1998)

About Hungarian photographer,Paul ALMÁSY (1906-2003)

Paul ALMÁSY was a French photojournalist of Hungarian origin who mainly lived in Paris and has worked as a photojournalist worldwide for over 50 years.
Paul ALMÁSY was born in Budapest and grew up there. He left Hungary at the age of 17 and studied political science in Vienna, Munich and Heidelberg from 1924 to 1928.
He became a journalist and wrote the first reports from Rome for the German press agency Wehr from 1929 to 1931.

To illustrate his articles, he took the first photographs as part of a trip to South America in 1935. In the following years, countless reports closed
from all parts of the world: in 1936 ALMÁSY crossed the Sahara in the car for the 'Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung' and made several trips to Africa in the late 1930s.
During the Second World War he created reports from France, Belgium and the Netherlands for the Swiss press between 1940 and 1943.
After the war, Paris became the center of his life, which continued to be shaped by travel, for example he traveled to Indochina in 1950. From 1952, ALMÁSY was commissioned by
UN institutions such as UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO, for which he undertook trips as an accredited employee.
In 1956 ALMÁSY became a French citizen.

From 1972 to 1989 he held professorships in Paris at the Sorbonne and at the Center de Perfectionnement des Journalistes. In 1993 ALMÁSY was appointed Knight of the Order Pour le Mérite.
In 2003 he died at the age of 97 on his estate in Jouars-Pontchartrain near Paris. His estate contains around 120,000 negatives.

Photo books by and on the work of Paul ALMÁSY