The Eye of the Predator – from the book: “Még egy kört”

– About the photos of
 Eva Kitty Bumbulucz – referring to her photo book “Budapest by light”.

”Visual acuity is the quantified value of sharp vision, which is determined in Hungary by the so-called decimal vision tester board of the Kettesy method by which the visual acuity can be determined from 5 meters. Its value changes between 0,1 and 1,0, where 1,0 corresponds to 100 per cent vision.”[1]

”Clairvoyance is the ability to recognize and review some (complicated) situation, connection, problem quickly and clearly.”[2]

The above keywords came to my mind in relation to the works of Eva Kitty Bumbulucz.
Then I looked for the exact definitions of these, because her photos prove that the artist can see perfectly, and furthermore she is able to grasp the vision as well.

Kitty – from now on let me call her this way – appeared four years ago in Újlipótváros.

She became a regular at the “the terrace”. For quite some time we did not realize she always had a camera. Or two. A large-size Canon EOS 250 D and a smaller Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II, hiding all the time in her purse. These are merely tools for her, functional objects, as she knows exactly that the creator is not the machine, but the person standing behind it. In Pozsonyi street she sits down for a coffee nearly each day. Let’s imagine a lady with her curly, black hair, in black clothes, wearing black sunglasses, as she asks for her black coffee, and she takes it near to her black camera and black lens cap. Then she wanders out to the city to take black-and-white images. Walking up and down in the town, but she definitely avoids tourist areas and tourists taking shots with their mobiles.

Kitty’s working method can only be tracked by her pictures: she watches, selects, waits, catches the

moment, then edits. And there are situations when she gives chance to accidental events. She catches her unsuspecting “victim” by the eye of the predator, which can also see at night. In her black-and white pictures, between the spectrum, there are countless shades of tones. There are easy tones among her works, but there are pictures which end in catharsis, because the moment, frozen by the photographer, makes the onlooker to decode it. Urban landscapes, still-lives, portraits and tableaus

appear in her works. These can be grouped only afterwards, while the order of the shots is not determined by her, but the given situation. In her works there are human figures (portraits, busts, full-length positions), the artificial environment built by man, and organic nature, too. Hiatus, the lack of man also strengthens human presence. Her photos can transmit human feelings, sentiments, connections in the way that man himself does not appear in her works. She is a seer. Wonderful to behold. Mirabile visu. 

I select/sample from among the works. In the garden of Interruption there are “only” a white round table with two chairs. One of them is just overturned. A few motives, a minimalist approach. However, its title makes it unambiguous that the symbolism of the picture refers to love when it’s over. One of the chairs has overturned, one of the lovers got out of the relationship. Geometrical shapes are confronted in the photos of Random Contrast I-II. The counterpoint of the squared, vertically and horizontally divided, railed, outdoor window is the perfect form of the lampshade.  However, already in the second work, nature, luxuriating like lianas, is confronted with a geometrical square, with a white window frame. Counterpoint, otherwise. “Tender is the Night”[3] – the title of an American novel came to my mind in connection with some of her works executed in the evening or just at night. The stripes of shadows are projected on a serpentine-like bench in the Adumbration, while several sources of light pulsate and tiny drops of light shine on the greenery. The residents have already rested in the “balcony scene” of the Words Unspoken; lonely yawning reed chairs are emptily waiting for the morning. In the Rhythm there are horizontally proportioned floors, to which a lean, bald tree is looking at in the inner courtyard. The staircase is empty. The tree is barren. Loneliness all around. It’s hard to peep into the Secret Garden to see a bench shining blindingly white. The cage of the Lost Nightingale looks like a Christmas tree decoration. The precisely elaborated handmade product is the tool of detention. The freedom of the lost bird is questioned by the hard, black field of the background. It’s illusion all over. The main motives of the work Trapped are the three-parted shapes, the grating of the black, white and grey fences and windows, which suggest the sensation of defense. Actually, it is about illusion again; man voluntarily builds his prison. The Traces of Decadence represents a situation known by everybody. It is the chaotic mass on a table followed by a house party. While the room remains in absolutely darkness, a window, peeking out in the upper right corner, projects the light onto the table, which narrows the perspective towards the background. This sort of light nearly glorifies the scene. We face a contemporary still-life. In the Coincidental Symmetry the artist could catch one of the ugliest buildings of Budapest. It is so ugly, that nobody takes a shot of it. However, Kitty noticed the rhythm and symmetry of the train, standing in the Southern Railway Station, and that of the building behind it.

Her picture suggests that man compulsively boxes up himself in the spirit of his uniformed world concept.

Lots of her works are about lonely or grouping, acting people. It is an everyday man on his daily routine, going somewhere, waiting for someone, resting somewhere. Nothing special. However, in Kitty’s pictures, they play the leading part. The only partner of the old man, sauntering homeward bound, is his own shadow in the image Loneliness. The figures of the World Viewers are waiting for mulled wine before the espresso. In masks, still in the Covid period.  The sitting figure of the Checkmate is waiting for the store opening to have his daily food. Two figures of Why not? have already got their coffee, soft drink. The housewife of Morning has Spoken is just ventilating the bedclothes on the balcony grille. Day after day. The sun worshippers turn their faces, bodies toward the sun the Surrendering and Cohesion pictures. The pants of the fat, riding man of the All in! are hanging down, his pants with advertising captions flash. The purposefully moving young guy of the Conscious Steps takes care not to roll over. The florist of the Off Season…sells his wares at an impossible place, as the figure of the Trade in Shade drunk on his table full of jars of jam. Their goods will remain on them. The figures of Synchroneity have fallen asleep on a bench in the park that their heads are supported by the hands the same way. Coincidence is in pairs. In the photo Privacy one can see “only” a simple scene. There are two figures sitting on a long, four-portioned bench in a railway station. Both sit at the ends of the bench. Where else? We can see the documented symbolism of seclusion, separation, social loneliness.

I must definitely mention the series Wasteland 1-6. Though the spot is located in the heart of Budapest, the majority of people can see this environment only from the windows of trains. We are in the field bordered by the Westend and the Western Railway Station. The artist takes shots where gas beats up the landscape, unserviceable wagons stand on the blind tracks covered by ragweed, run-down stalls, buildings are crumbling, on which even the graffiti captions peel off with plaster. This terrain is known only by the platelayers. And homeless people, who come here to sleep.

Kitty does not want to perpetuate “beauty”’, nor aesthetics. She sees and makes us see. After the primary vision, the recipient – through associations and connotations – can discover the secondary reading of the pictures, this way the possibility of wider interpretation, another layer of meaning.

Photography is “the art of moment”, it is said. The commonplace is true in the sense of the word, that exposition is only a moment, fractions of a second. It is an unbelievably simple motion: the click by the first forefinger of the fingertip always fixes a given moment. However, this moment, by copying the image onto a photopaper, has become eternal. Photography makes time infinite.

Some days ago, Eva Kitty Bumbulucz and I were selecting her photos. Once we glimpsed somebody, who recently passed away. It was strange to see him again. From the finished moment of the past, a man appeared in the present, whom we can see in the future. Non omnis moriar.[4]

[1] Buda Eye-Center, homepage

[2] A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (Defining Vocabulary of the Hungarian Language)

[3] Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night, Charles Scribner’s Sons, USA, 1934

[4] I shall not wholly die. Horatius