(b. 1928, Budapest, Hungry; d. 2026, Montréal, Canada)
Gabor Szilasi became interested in photography after he was forced to interrupt his medical studies in Hungary, having been blacklisted after attempting to flee the country to escape the incoming communist regime in 1949. From November 15–25, 1956, Szilasi used his camera to document the Hungarian Revolution. Escaping from Hungary in 1957, he arrived in Halifax and later settled in Montréal in 1959. Employed by the Office du film du Québec, Szilasi worked on photography assignments in Montréal as well as in rural regions of Québec, documenting the province, particularly its rural areas.
In 1970, Szilasi began taking a series of photographs, notably in Charlevoix, Beauce, Abitibi, and Lac Saint-Jean (Québec), with his photographs of Charlevoix earning him national acclaim. “Szilasi’s Québec is an intimate study, validated by his own visible love of the province and his subjects’ open hospitality” (National Film Board of Canada, 1980). This body of work, photographs of people, façades, interiors, and signs in both country and city, resulted in exhibitions such as La Beauce (1974) and Panoramas de Montréal (1982). Geoffrey James wrote: “His images of Beauce County are part of a larger and continuing documentation of rural life in Québec, a document that includes landscapes, architecture, portraits, and an accumulation of those significant details that help to sum up a manner of living. In his craftsmanlike and self-effacing way, Szilasi was pointing out truths that most people recognize only too late . . .” (1974). Szilasi said, “Traces of man interested me very much, whether it was architecture or interiors or just a street or sign. There had to be a connection between nature and man in my photographs” (1980). Considered an exponent of “down-to-earth humane realism,” Szilasi rarely photographed “official” buildings, choosing instead to capture the vernacular and non-monumental architecture of Québec.
In 1980, Szilasi made his first trip back to Hungary since his emigration. This trip marked the beginning of numerous visits during which he photographed family friends and various architectural sites. The 1999 exhibition Return to Budapest was composed of such images. In an interview with the artist, Barbara Steinman suggested that Szilasi’s decision to photograph architectural buildings had to do with their durability and permanence: “You had to flee Hungary,” she pointed out. “A sense of shifting ground and the transience of reality could have permeated your work. Yet, when I look at your photographs taken over the years, it’s as though you sought out and recorded a kind of stability. The fixed frontal views of buildings and frozen moments of the interiors seem to confer permanence on those places.” Szilasi replied, “I believed that things had to be documented in the present, because everything was changing and in eternal flux. With most of the sites in the Ste-Catherine Street series, or people aging, or cityscapes changing—they had to be photographed then” (1997).
In 1997, Szilasi commenced a series of Polaroid portraits, marking the beginning of a more collaborative process in which subjects were encouraged to share their opinions about the initial photograph. He then proceeded to take additional images, often incorporating their suggestions. That same year, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal held a retrospective of his work entitled Gabor Szilasi: Photographs 1954–1996.
Szilasi’s later project was a photographic series on the Saint-Michel neighbourhood of Montréal, exploring the community’s unique mixture of South American, Italian, Haitian, and Québécois cultures. From 1979 to 1995, Szilasi taught photography at Concordia University in Montréal.
