Imago Winter 2004/2005 [antikvár]

Szilvi t óth Spaces Brought Alive Life has been often and by many understood or presented as a stage play, which we incline to accept in certain situations. This supposed theatre however serves less and less as a mirror of the world perceived to be reol, if reminds more of the strange medieval carnivals, antics end rites, which were once intended to show a willingly twisted and deformed picture of reality. The possibility of such a mode of being becomes seemingly lasting in the flash of the festivities momentary flush. The world continues to exist in an ever obviously inverted way, becoming a grotesque picture of itself. The persisting and over-the-edge pursuing of the "'!oys of life", the ever more crazy vortex of amusement in the culture of entertaining and entertainment push this grotesque form from the peripherals of society into its very center. There the oppearance, the surface appearing modes and forms become the most important. The being outside of territory, coincidence and things based upon other code systems get into the center, the antipole becomes the pole, the "good and civilized" world and its "truth and beauty" become accordingly marginal: the difference becomes normality. Szilvi Tóth shows such a possible appearance of society made up by the people she meets. "My main thewe is the man, w/io brings the rity to life with his existence." - she says. Her pictures present people removed from the reality of their surrounding and their determining modes. Only the individual is seen, frontally opposite the photographer and her camera. This direct position, nevertheless becoming mediated because of the presence of the camera, is an ancient pattern of behavior. Once this open position of the body was communicating the vital meaning of "you can trust me". The pictured individuals with their openness only make the appearance obvious, because though they - seemingly • give themselves, they are probably only acting. It is hard to decide, if they play a role and if so, who's role it really is. And Szilvi Tóth admits, what more, she struggles to interfere with the natural flow of the things she sees by treating the chosen persons as models. She instructs them according to her will, she rules their movements, body positions - even though not in a total manner, like the photographer rules over his real model. In her case this is a necessity, since most of the people she meets are unable to behave in such a natural way - or to act that naturally - as they did at the moment of meeting. But Szilvi Tóth doesn't want to take on the role of an image thief watching and lurking in the shadows. She finds it important, that the person she photographs knows about what happens to her and to her picture {virtually and literally), because the persons help and cooperation is necessary in order to recreate on film the movement, facial expression or their combination (a kind of rewind, replay), which captured the imagination of the photographer. "I am making a photograph, when in a space ] fmd a being, whose inner world radiates into its snrrounding, makes it colorful, brings it alive." ¦ in the authors words. She generates through the act of photographing the situations, in which these influences become real, sensible and graspable. She makes the chosen persons