Gabor Szilasi (b.1928, Budapest, Hungary)

A depiction of a busy urban vista, King’s Hall Building was part of an extensive survey of Sainte-Catherine Street in Montreal that Gabor Szilasi (b.1928) undertook in the late 1970s. Methodically and skillfully, he focused on the streetscape as it changed with the seasons and the times. Szilasi remarked that traces of human life interested him: “whether it’s architecture or interiors or just a street or sign. There has to be a connection between nature and man in my photographs.”  This emphasis on the connection between humans and the public and private spaces they inhabit has shaped his oeuvre for decades.

Born in Hungary, Szilasi began as an amateur photographer in Budapest, taking pictures of street scenes and later the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. These activities put him at risk and eventually he and his father emigrated and settled in Montreal in 1959; he did not return to Hungary until 1980. Szilasi worked for the Office du film du Québec and was sent to photograph subjects around rural Quebec through the 1960s.  During the same period, he continued to make his own documentary work, creating personal photographs of his adopted city and portraits of friends and family that were first exhibited in 1967.

Szilasi was largely self-taught, though he sought out workshops and owned a large library of books on photography, including some on photographers who informed and shaped his practice, such as American Walker Evans (1903–1975). Although his early work was made with a 35mm camera, in 1970 Szilasi was awarded a Canada Council grant and shifted to using a large format 4 x 5 camera that rendered far more detail in the resulting images. He continued to travel through rural areas, seeking willing subjects, as seen in Mrs. Marie-Jeanne Lessard, Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, 1973, and photographing inside and outside of buildings in black and white and sometimes colour.

Szilasi was particularly close to Sam Tata (1911–2005), who moved in the same Montreal art circles and served as a mentor. From 1972 to 1974, Szilasi was a member of the Group d’action photographique (GAP) and his extensive connections are evident in his photographs of the Montreal art scene. He taught photography at Concordia University from 1979 to 1995, and his work has been widely collected and exhibited.