The first copy of Ata Kandó’s monography will be presented to her by Ad van Denderen during Ata’s 95th birthday party The party takes place at LUX Photo Gallery between 5 and 7 pm
We kindly ask you to arrive in time.
The Hungarian-Dutch photographer Ata Kandó was born in Budapest in 1913. In 1932 she
left for Paris with her first husband, the artist Gyula Kandó, with whom she had three
children. After the war she joined the Magnum photo agency as an assistant. In 1954 she
married the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken and moved to Holland with him.
Kandó first made her name with compassionate photographs of refugees fleeing Hungary after
the suppressed uprising of 1956 and of aboriginal tribes in Amazonia. At the same time she was taking poetic photos of her own children as well as photographing for a number of fashion houses. Ata Kandó also played a significant role for younger generations of Dutch
photographers through her teaching at the Enschede Academy of Visual Arts (aki) and
elsewhere. Among her pupils were later luminaries such as Koen Wessing and Ad van
Denderen, the latter of whom, together with Leo Erken, made the selection for this monograph.
Philosopher, political scientist and nrc Handelsblad journalist Rosan Hollak contributes a fascinating biographical portrait of one of Dutch photographic history’s most striking
figures.
Ata Kandó’s work has been published in many books in addition to being seen at numerous
exhibitions throughout Europe and North America. This is the first comprehensive overview of her photographic oeuvre.
