At a first approach, the Korniss phenomenon is easily explainable: he turned to
the people he felt sympathy for with goodwill, persistently, humbly monitoring their lives over three decades, and his work has been mellowed by time. The master of microtime, of hundredths and thousandths of a second, has experienced long-working processes, has understood that one has to resign oneself to time, for nothing can be wiser.
A person who exposes himself to his environment and the events around him does not bother much about style. Korniss’s first approach is that of a “realist”. His method and style, however, have changed a great deal over three decades.
Korniss has realized that Transylvanian peasant society abounds in contradictions. On the surface of everyday life, looked on as the material culture of villages, it has gradually become the hunting ground of collectors and dealers; conversely, the artefacts of urban “globalization” have oozed in step by step. “In these two contrasting currents, the world of the village gradually lost its traditional character, things no longer were of a piece.” (p. 124) He derived his method from this insight: utter harmony reigns in the pictures, according to classical rules of composition—and it takes the viewer long minutes to realize that something is wrong. The Coca Cola logo “subtly lurking” on the wooden shack behind Farmer with Grazing Cow (1996), a T-shirt with a Camel logo, worn by a lad in a village dance house (1992), the gigantic plastic wristwatch hanging from the wall of a village fiddler’s kitchen (1997) or the startingly lifelike poster of Michael Jackson alongside the family snapshots in Room Corner (1997). Incidentally, photography itself had its own part in triggering off the “two
contrasting currents”, for the first portrait photograph brought back from a
fair to the traditional peasant home in the last century set the seed of an alien medium there.
In Korniss’s photographs the “intact”, “idyllic” Transylvanian village of yore can often be seen. This is connected to the fact that in spite of the apparent stylessness, there are several stylistic references. What is strong in the 1960s is the ethnographer’s approach, which came out of the cities to seek (and find) “true sources” in Hungarian villages, rural people, homes and a material environment which occasionally reflected the sunny genre pictures of the “folksy-Hungarian” style of the interwar period. Analogies can be drawn from the history of art as well: Flemish Madonnas to compare with the young woman in Woman in the Sheepfold with Her Animals (1992), Nativities to Farmer in his Stable (1998). However, this slightly pathetic chiaroscuro allows a somewhat greyer, sombrer heroism à la Robert Capa or Cartier Bresson to show through, for example the shocking Disabled Veteran (1976) behind whose silhouette the snow-covered corn stubs transform themselves into a war cemetery, or the Schoolgirls (1973) trudging in deep mud transform themselves into the tail-end of a defeated army. The café of Sic (Szék) 1992, or a kitchen at Deses¸ti (Dezse) 1993, pair themselves to Robert Frank’s bleak hotel room when the television screen crops up in it. The pictorial imagery of the sixties is also evoked by shots such as Woman on a Tractor (1996) and Milking in the Fields (1997).

Korniss’s most fascinating photographs are the recent ones. Working from local specifics, he produces a highly complex type of picture. Using the decorations of the “fine “ rooms, the colourful patches the hand-painted plates create as they stand in a soldierly line on the wall, a picture field that recalls a carpet or a cheap rug on the wall, he places one or more of his subjects in front of this backdrop. The composition rises up from its details, and, as with a young man from Mera (Méra) 1998, or the boys in hats and bow-ties in Brothers in the Fine Room (1997), what we see before us is a sort of Diane Arbus waxwork show set in the Kalotaszeg region.
Korniss is able to produce symmetrical group pictures arranged in hierarchical tableaux; this he does not only in interiors but also in diverse settings—outdoors, in wood sheds or farm yards, sometimes with a multitude of cables, lights and scaffoldings making a studio seem small. These tableaux revive the archetypical poses of photographic history. “These occasions conjured up many things—forgotten gestures, solemn glances, postures inherited from grandparents—the old magic that was photography.” (p. 80) That is the method that Korniss appears to excel in.
In bygone days, the set pose was imposed by the need for long exposures. Following Eugène Atget, August Sander and their fellows, this inevitable rigidity became a tool for sociological interpretation, and later, from the 1960s—as Diane Arbus or Tibor Hajas show—a disciplined collaboration evolved between the photographer and the model. The psychological interplay becomes highly intricate. The more “sincere” the portrayed person wants to be, the more rigid he becomes, but the stiffer the pose, the more of the model is revealed from within. Korniss’s models add one more psychological element—respect for the stranger—and another one on his part, tactful and interested sympathy. The loving friendship evolving from the interplay of the two feelings comes out from the picture and the viewer too is drawn into its current.
 

László Beke
is General Director of the Muûcsarnok/Kunsthalle and author of numerous publications on contemporary art.