Judit Horváth M Simulacrum “Tale is the Daughter of Imagination, and Dreams are her Sisters” Opening remarks by Péter György Curator: Károly Kincses. Open to the public: 13. March - 26. April 2009. Every weekdays: 14.00 – 19.00 Weekend: 11.00 – 19.00
Simulacrum · Judit Horváth M.

Judit M. Horváth

1952 was born in Sárvár
1969-81 worked as a nurse
1985 began photographing professionally, first as a freelance photographer for various magazines
1990-1995 photo-editor and photo-reporter at the roma magazin Amaro Drom, later editor-in-chief fro three years.
1994 press photo prize – Essay-prize
1998 together with her husband, György Stalter, they publish a photographic album about the life of gypsies in Hungary, titled Other World (Más Világ)
2002 they found Kópia Photogallery, where they hold individual and group exhibitions

Individual Exhibitions:

1999 Other World, Mediawave, Gyor
2000 Other World, Vigadó Gallery, Budapest
2001 Other World, Kaunas, Lithuania, Wien, Helsinki
2007 Other World, Bielsko Biala, Poland

Group Exhibitions:

1993 “The world is a ladder”, Museum of Etnography, Budapest
1994 Press Photo, Museum of Etnography, Budapest
1999 Sarah Mortland Gallery and the Hungarian Consulate, New York, USA
2001 Regards Hongrois, Paris, France
2006 Selected Photos, Budapest Gallery, Budapest
2006 Dog’s World Mai Manó House, Budapest
2007 Other World San Sperate, Sardinia
2008 Watch us now!, Collegium Hungaricum, Vienna
2008 Die Vergessenen Europaer, City Museum, Cologne

She is a member of the Association of Hungarian Journalists, the Association of Photographical Artists, and a freelance photographer.

She was born into an assimilated roma family in a western-Transdanubian town. After falling in love with his husband, she fell in love with his job as well. She did not accept her origin for a long time, just to become the editor-in-chief of a roma magazine later for a few years. She, with her husband photographed practically all the gypsy settlements of the country and the ghettos of the capital. Her new exhibition, Simulacrum/Duplicitous Surface is the result of ten years of work, the outcome of which is very different from her earlier documentarist photography, still bearing a lot of similarity with it. In her words:

As a consequence of my origins, my spiritual constitution, and my sex, Reality and Fable are closely connected in my mind; the thin line between them is easily trespassable. I easily communicate between the two, and this dual state of being is the suspense that gives birth to my pictures.
Magic, the capacity to alter reality, begins with collecting: my objects surround me, we live together for years, and a singular, private relation develops between us. Then once, the day comes when the picture living inside me jumps out to the world suddenly and uncontrollably. In my pictures, the representations of the imaginary life of my characters are surrounded by the desires and elements of my real life. By the exclusion of reality, and the representation of an alternative world, I create the possibility of leaving and entering, the possibility of identification with something else.
I create opportunity to gain knowledge about the unknown, gain insight to the world of my creation, characteristic of me, hoping to provoke emotional associations, surprise and recognition in my audience.

There are two different worlds: the world of the receiver and the world of the artwork. These two worlds are in close connection with each other. The receiver has a set of preconceptions, emotions and suspicions, which he or she would build into his or her interpretation of the actual artwork unwillingly. A dialogue begins between the artwork and the receiver.

If there were no Tales, our fantasy, our imagination could not develop. Without tales, we are closed into our own world; Tale is virtually a key to a deeper understanding.