The Kinetic Man
““Never pose your subjects. Let them move about naturally. All great photographs today are snapshots.” ”
Ciao and welcome back to our weekly appointment. For this column, we’ll explore the dynamics of the artist Martin Munkacsi, who became well known and eventually famous for his kinetic photography. Munkacsi is an artist that I believe is often undervalued, in my opinion he modernized photography and questioned classical fashion photography techniques. Be ready for some funky and thrilling art.
Munkacsi was born in 1896 in Kolozsvár, Hungary. His early years were marked by his work as a newspaper writer and photographer in Hungary where he was responsible for the sports column. Especially, at that point in time the development of photography had not yet been modernized in comparison to the endless possibilities we have at hand today, thus sport photographs were mostly taken outdoors creating technical limitations. The technique behind capturing certain moving images and kinetic moments in time is a methodological and artistic procedure that demands undeniable composing skills and a high concentration. The movement limits the time you have to capture the situation and physical act as a photograph, but at the same time an exact recreation of the movement and image is nearly impossible, since the subject matter is not still or posing. Some of his early work is seen in the image on the left. It is the complexity of his subject’s body language that often make his work fascinating and wholly influential.
His work eventually led him to Berlin, Germany. He was able to land a job at the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and worked additionally at the fashion magazine Die Dame. He travelled all over Europe and photographed anything that amazed him- basically a lot of Berliners which I can’t deny as a German, are often very captivating. As fate would have it this is where he soon met Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. She was convinced of his talent and the remarkable work he could produce in the future, thus she hired him for a photoshoot. Through his diverse style of photography, he broke the mould and freed himself from the claustrophobics of a studio. By doing so he no longer pictured women as mannequins but as dynamic and free spirits. His photo of Lucile Brokaw running down the beach in a bathing suit was revolutionary and laid the bed for a new era of fashion photography.
Following his editorial in 1933, he was offered a permanent spot at Harper’s Bazaar in New York. This is where he spent the rest of his life continuing his great work.
Overall, I view his work as being spontaneous in its manner and yet so enthralling and perfect in its depiction. This makes him one of the greatest photographers of all time for me. I absolutely adore his distinctive vision of the world making him live up to his name of being the “Father of fashion photography”. Therefore, he not only inspires me but also generations of famous photographers that where to come after him. Richard Avedon stated that:
“Today the world of what is called fashion is peopled with Munkácsi’s babies, his heirs. It was my first lesson in photography, and there were many lessons after, all learned from Munkácsi, though I never met him. He brought a taste for happiness and honesty and a love of women to what was, before him, a joyless, lying art.”
Munkacsi is a revolutionary artist who changed the way of photography and modernized it to such a degree that his influence can still be seen in almost every fashion magazine you open today, ultimately making him The Kinetic Man that changed the way we perceive the beauty of movement. You can find a collection of my favourite shots in the gallery below:
