From Craftsmanship to Artistry: on Márton Szipál`s Art of photography

Károly Kincses:
From Craftsmanship to Artistry:
On Márton Szipál’s Art
of Photography
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From Craftsmanship to Artistry
Prologue
We have heard his story many times, told in various forms. The account of the
eighty years he has lived might as well be cast in eight sentences, which would go
something like this. He is the most talented descendant of a renowned dynasty of
photographers, who – despite his father’s insistence – initially resented the idea of
becoming a photographer himself. He worked as a bank clerk, he was a prisoner
of war in the Soviet Union, he opened his own studio in Debrecen only to give it
up for a union membership a few years later, which was both a compulsion and
a necessary means of survival for many Hungarian photographers in the age of
forced collectivization. He then moved to Budapest, where he initially worked as an
assistant photographer, then soon became head of unit, and later sales manager.
Despite the fact that he could make a decent living, he was one of those in his
union who crossed the border to Austria in 1956, with the full consent of the union
directors. In Vienna, he was recipient of a prestigious award, and some time later,
with László Almási, he became co-owner of a portrait studio on Los Angeles’ famed
Sunset Boulevard. For twenty-five years, he took photographs of film stars and
ordinary people alike, while extravagant looks, a non-conformist personality, and
his being well-connected gained him a membership among the showbiz-people.
Yet, he has returned to his native Hungary, reviving himself in the eighth decade
of his life, and has become a celebrity proper, well-known for myriads of media
appearances. This is the “Szipál-bio” in a nutshell, to which the popular press is
eager to add colorful stories about his life in Hollywood, his five wives, luxury cars,
and raucous parties.
Having little interest in such stories, we are all the more fascinated by the fact that
he has unfailingly kept to his professional standards for over sixty years, and even
today he is still involved in a variety of activities, be it photography, teaching, or
giving interviews. The lesson his career in photography teaches us is that beside
the paramount importance of gaining professional expertise as well as mastering
suitable techniques and skills, even more important is the psychological sensitivity
or intuition whereby he can make his models look their best at the very moment of
exposition. He is good at his trade, he has a good technique, he is blessed with good
psychological skills, he is a good talker, he looks good, and, in addition, he is good
with the media.
But now, let us see who Márton Szipál, everybody’s “Marci”, really is. Where
he comes from, where he is going, and how we can place him in the history of
Hungarian photography.
The family
He is the most well-known member of a genuine dynasty of photographers, with
a history of almost two hundred years. His father, Károly Márton Szipál was
a photographer of the royal court, his wife, his two children, Márton and Margit,
Károly Márton’s uncle, József Szipál, Márton’s son, Péter, Margit’s husband, József
Szegheő, and their two daughters, Mária and Katalin Szegő are all photographers.
We might put this dynastic continuity down to mere chance, but there may be more
to it than that. Family lore has it that the Szipáls came to Hungary from Bohemia.
The yarn involves the grandfather, who supposedly carved out the footing of St.
Stephen’s equestrian statue. This is the first indication of the emergence of the artist/
craftsmen line in the genealogy. Next in line is the brother of Martin’s grandmother,
József Szipál, in the subsequent generation, who, trained as a photographer, opened
a studio in Bratislava (Pozsony) in the early 1900s. His nephew was Károly Márton
Szipál, photographer of the royal court, who, with an eventful life behind him,
praciced his trade in Sárospatak and Sátoraljaúlyhely, having mastered expertise
in photography during the four years he spent in a school of arts in Munich. He
lived in Sárospatak between 1919 and 1923, after which he moved to Szolnok. The
Szipál family moved to Debrecen in 1930, taking up residence at 41 Piac Street.
The twenty-four-room studio, home to a highly successful venture, was hit by a
bomb in 1944, which may have played a role in the father’s decision to move to
Nyíregyháza. This is where the wave of collectivizations reached him after 1951.
The family moved to Budapest in 1956, where they first took lodging at 21 Szemere
street in Dictrict 5, and then in 1963 they relocated to 1 Apáczai Csere János street.
Károly Szipál was active until the age of 81, when his daughter, Maca, took over the
studio, whose husband, József Szegheő, had also been trained as a photographer,
and their two daughters followed in their parents’ footsteps. It is my conviction that
as long as there are photo studios in Budapest, they will continue to keep to the
trade. All of the family members listed above certainly belonged among the topranking representatives of their trade, but none of them was an artist. This path
was for Márton to take, which certainly takes nothing away from the decisive role
his family played, both together and individually, in shaping his character, thus
contributing to his transformation from Márton to Martin.
From Márton Szipál Martin S. Martin
From his father, he learned the basics of anatomy, which explains his ability to turn
even the most irregular face on his models into an attractive complexion. Likewise,
it was Károly Szipál who imparted to him knowledge about how to use lighting –
the bread and butter of a photographer – how to deal with props and backgrounds,
how to emphasize what is important and how to cover up anything unfitting or
unnecessary. Furthermore, it was in the late 1920s that photographers adopted the
use of electric lights and spotlights to achieve studio lighting effects, replacing the
formerly employed technique of overhead lighting in glass studios. Retrospectively,
we may venture to say that many proved unsuccessful at this shift of technology,
and the way I see it, this is what set off the downslide of standards in photography.
Károly Márton Szipál was one of the few exceptions who were capable of espousing
the new lighting technique without sacrificing high standards. He used spotlights
trained on tilted reflector sheets, whereby he could attain beautifully soft lighting
effects, similar to those he had been able to create by fine-tuning the curtain system
installed on the ceiling of the glass studio.
The son, Márton, has held on to the skills he acquired from his father to this very
day. It was on these firm foundations that he has built his own distinctive style,
constituted by his personality, his knowledge of philosophy and aesthetics, which
is what made him who he is. Having read through nearly a hundred interviews with
him, I noticed that when, instead of his affairs, his wives, his cars, his parties, he
talks about his profession, his father is always the first person he mentions, and then
continues to speak about him before he goes on to say what he himself has added
to what he almost unwittingly learned from Károly Márton Szipál. He likes to recall
that the only thing that interested him in the world of the studio, of which he has
been an integral part since his childhood, was the prettiness of the young women
employed as retouchers. And indeed, there were quite a few of them, since his father
ran a big studio in Debrecen at the time, with loads of work and many employees.
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This reaction on the young Szipál’s part is hardly surprising. To understand it better,
we should only imagine how it would have affected us at the age of 8 or 10, if our
father had been talking about nothing but the right position of the head or the eyes
in a composition, about how to light a face in the best possible way, or about how to
achieve the distinctive “Szipál-setting” so that a model can look his or her best. The
father knew very well, and he taught it to his son and daughters as well, that there
was an ideal posture of the head, which suited almost everybody. He used to tell
his children to cover the mouth of the model to know how the picture would come
out. One may not even notice when the model has a bright smile, but the eyes give
away even the smallest shred of anxiety. It is bits and pieces of knowledge such as
this that constitute the foundation of Márton Szipál’s art of photography that he is
known for today. This is how he acquired his basic skills, became accustomed to
high standards, and learned what a photographer is capable of doing by means of
appropriate setting and proper lighting. He undoubtedly brought all this from home
as a heritage, which he has kept alive ever since, teaching it both in Hungary and the
United States. There are some more elements of the paternal legacy which must
be mentioned. One of them is the fact that he has learned to compose pictures in
a specific way, moreover, he regards this as the quintessence of his ars poetica as
a photographer. As a result, it has always been his endeavor to make all objects in
his pictures harmonize with each other. Today, he argues from mathematics and
geometry when asked about his professional outlook. Although the young Márton
may have resisted at first, paternal remonstrance eventually yielded its results, and,
willy-nilly, he did have to learn. He has related several times that he saw Laurence
Olivier’s Hamlet at least a dozen times in the nearby movie theater, memorized
the lightning effects so that, through trial and error, he could replicate them in his
father’s studio. What a way to start a great career!
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From Craftsmanship to Artistry
Nevertheless, the young Szipál’s initial resistance was so strong that, having
graduated from the Secondary School of the Piarist Order in Debrecen, in 1942 [?]1
he started to work in a bank for a few months, and then became an employee at
an insurance firm. He soon realized, however, that he could not avoid dealing with
photography. He tried his hand at civil service, but he was certainly not cut out for
the job. Following this short detour, he started his two-year apprenticeship in his
father’s studio, which was required by the industrial statute and rigorously observed
by the chamber of commerce and trade. He received his certificate of craftsmanship
in 1942, but he could still not focus exclusively on photography. He attended military
school, from which he graduated as ensign, and was immediately relegated to the
front lines. Returning from his short captivity in the Soviet Union, he realized that
while life was harder and harder for young bank employees such as himself, his
father was still making a relatively decent living on his photo studio. This recognition
prompted him to become self-employed and start his own business. His father was
not supportive of this venture, claiming that Márton did not yet have the necessary
experience to succeed on his own, and refused to visit his son’s studio for almost
a year. By that time, Márton had made such great progress that his father had to
revise his opinion, appreciatively inquiring how his son knew what he knew. The
answer he received from his oftentimes rebuked son was gratifying in all respects: I learned everything from you, father.
From this point on, the course of their careers markedly diverged. The father continued
as a craftsman, in a union or on his own. Beside studio photography, which was his
livelihood, his son was attracted to the world of artists, so he favored people in
theatrical circles. Although taking photos of actors and actresses was by no means
a lucrative venture, it meant all the more in terms of prestige, so he exhibited these
pictures in his shop window. The list of actors who played in the Csokonai Theater in
Debrecen at the time is illustrious: Artúr Somlay, Árpád Gyenge, László Inke, László
Kozák, Bertalan Solti, Ilka Petur, Lili Móricz, Éva Spányik, Ferenc Zenthe were all
top-ranking in their profession.
Three years after he opened it in 1948, his studio was annexed by the union of
photographers. He had no choice but to give in, since the political ideology of the day
regarded the collectivization of private ventures just as desirable as the socialization
of banks and factories, or the redistribution of landed properties. Whether he liked
it or not, from 1951 onwards, Márton Szipál went on to be employed by the Artistic
Photo Collective of Debrecen, where he worked with well-known photographers
such as Sándor Berzéki, Gyula Gisser, József Hapák.
In 1953, he moved to Budapest, where he was employed by the Photographers’
Union of Budapest. The first question his superiors posed to him on introduction was
dripping with malicious irony: you are not, by any chance, a photographer of the
royal and imperial court like your father was, are you? Some introduction, isn’t it?
At first, he held the post of assistant photographer in a photo shop on Marx Square,
then he went on to become head of unit on November 7th Square, and later he was
appointed head of the sales department. Pretty fast career, one might say. He was
also successful as an artistic photographer, which is amply testified by the fact that
he was named Artiste FIAP by the Fédération Internationale de l’art Photographique,
that is, the International Federation of Artistic Photography, having met both the
quantitative and the qualitative requirements for the title. One of these requirements
was that the candidate was to have participated in a certain number of national and
international exhibitions. According to the regulations of the Federation, eligibility for
AFIAP-award was contingent on high artistic standards and outstanding technical
skills, moreover, the successful candidate was required to have at least five years of
professional experience, and had to provide proof of having had at least fifty of his/
her pictures accepted for international competitions, along with awards and prizes
he had won. No records have been preserved about how Szipál was able to exhibit
on so many occasions and enter so many competitions – hardly half a dozen of
them can be traced back, such as MADOME XI. National Exhibition in Budapest in
1955, the Fotohaus competition in Munich in the fall of 1956, where he won first
prize, and Exposicao Internacional de Arte Fotografica in the same year in Rio de
Janeiro, where he was awarded third prize for his picture Last Good-Bye.
On July 28 1956, he participated in the founding assembly of the Federation of
Hungarian Artistic Photographers, only to leave the country a few months later
with his second wife and the directors of the Photographers’ Union, such as Tamás
Veres, Győző Skíta, Béla Halmi, Béla Kálmán, and others. More than one third of
the employees in the Union defected. This concluded the period of basic training
for Márton Szipál, which began in Debrecen and continued in Budapest. From
this point on, his career was on the upswing. To begin with, he learned from the
Viennese papers that he had won first prize at the Fotohaus competition in Munich,
for pictures he had submitted well before the Hungarian revolution broke out. He
arrived in New York in late November, 1956, where he could not find a job, so he
moved on to Cleveland in a few weeks, a city which was home to a large Hungarian
community back then. He spent a month there trying to find a job, but he proved to
be unsuccessful again. András Tőkés, who lived in Los Angeles at the time, sent him
money to pay for his fare to LA, which became his next destination. In January 1957,
he landed a job at Tom Atkins Studio in Los Angeles for 35 dollars a week. Initially,
he worked in the photo lab, developing black-and-white pictures. The owner had
three shops in town: on Wilchare Boulevard, in the Robinson Warehouse, and
Downtown. As Márton’s English vocabulary gradually improved, he was more and
more frequently offered work as a photographer. He shuttled back and forth among
the three shops, taking pre-ordered photographs. Now he made 150 dollars, started
to adapt himself to life in LA, and even found his own clients. He worked for Tom
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Atkins for a year, then he took photos of his clients in a rented apartment. He had a
supporter as well: the English Lord Landsdown’s wife, who referred clients to him
on a weekly basis. In 1959, his professional progress was made apparent by the fact
that he was elected member of the Professional Photographers of America, which
accepted four of his pictures, as a certificate testifies.
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From Craftsmanship to Artistry
When in 1961 László Almási – a fellow-photographer from Budapest – arrived in
Los Angeles, the two of them went to Tupis Café on Via Veneto and they decided
to team up and rent a studio together to work on an individual basis. As a portrait
photographer, Szipál relied primarily on the expertise he had acquired in Hungary,
he took black-and-white pictures and made photo enlargements, while Almási at
first was engaged in laboratory work, and later took up color photography in their
shared a studio. The first year was not easy, nor was it fraught with spectacular
success. Things changed for the better when the film star John Wayne came
to the studio to have his photo taken. Szipál exhibited Wayne’s black-and-white
photo in the shop window, because he knew full well that the best way to promote
a business on Sunset Boulevard was to show off its famous clients. This was a
breakthrough in Szipál’s American career, though financial success followed only
when he signed a contract with the fashion magazine Californian Girls. From 1965
onwards, he traveled the world, taking fashion photos from Greece to Egypt, from
Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Now he had the means to buy out Almási’s share of the
business, and opened his own Martin Studio at 8525, which became one of the hip
places of the local high society. The studio was frequented by several famous film
stars, who came in droves to have their portraits made in the now famous “Martinstyle”. Sunset Strip Boulevard was the main street of Los Angeles, where the best
fashion shops were to be found, which made his studio even more popular.
In 1974, his son, who had worked as a photographer in Budapest, defected to the
USA. He lived with his father for a year and used his laboratory. A year later, Martin
bought a small studio for Péter, so from that point on, there were two Szipáls taking
photographs in Los Angeles. It is not my concern here, though, to evaluate the work
of Szipál Jr. It is a fact that Martin became famous for his black-and-white photos,
which were traditional in terms of technique, and yet had their own distinctive style,
reflecting a highly individual outlook. Although normally amicable to everyone,
Martin could be rigorous in the studio. He paid attention to every minute detail down
to the position of his model’s little toe, whether it be Priscilla Presley, Margaux
Hemingway or Miss Smith from the suburbs. He was responsible for deciding on the
hairstyle, the makeup and the outfit of the model depending on what he found most
suitable for the given setting. He designed the lighting effects and the background.
Oftentimes it took hours of preparation for a portrait photo to be taken, which did take
its toll both on him and the model. Martin’s endeavor was to compose his pictures in
accordance with the conventions of artistic photography. He laid special emphasis
on the eyes, stressing them by means of lighting and setting. He made good use of
his psychological skills as well, which he needed to make their models look their
best and show their most advantageous side in all respects. Though it may have
demanded excruciating effort on the model’s part, in the end, everyone was grateful
for the stubbornness of the photographer and was happy to pay the unusually high
amount s/he was asked for the pictures, which certainly made Martin even more
famous.
This went on for decades, but in 1992 he had to close down the studio. It was due
partly to the falling number of orders and partly to the rising rental costs. He rented a
three-storey house in West Hollywood (at 89 Kings Road), and lived on the second
floor, while he had a windowless studio on the first floor, and a sunlight studio with
overhead lights on the third. His work consisted partly of private orders, partly of
commissions from actor and model agencies: he made portfolios, budding actors
and actresses had their first casting photos taken by him as a first step towards
stardom. When the agencies ceased to send clients, he moved back to Hungary in
1997, which was just as abrupt a decision as the one he had made forty-four years
earlier when he left the country.
The present
It is worth sparing a thought to how a man of seventy-odd years could have
readapted himself to life in Budapest, which was hardly anything like LA, but he
did return home in all senses of the word. He made friends, he found himself things
to do, and he adopted a new technique when the changing times required him to.
At quite an old age, past his prime, he learned how to use digital image making,
he uses photo shop to enhance his pictures, he prints photos, and thereby he still
belongs to the mainstream of the profession. He purchased a digital Nikon, and
discovered the nuances of the new technology for himself. Meanwhile, he has had
dozens of exhibitions and made many appearances in the media, but above all, he
has set himself the task of passing on what he learned.
He held a photography course in Csobánka, he taught in studio D1, he published
a book in 2004 bearing the title Márton Szipál: Stars through the Eyes of a Star
Photographer, in which one can easily trace the continuity which shows how much
lives on in “Marci” of the “Martin” he only seemingly left behind in the New World.
The book features a medley of pictures from the present day as well as from fifty
years ago, with both American and Hungarian stars. Magdi Bódi and Lula Szász,
Enikő Eszenyi and Olivia Hussey, the Julia of Zefirelli’s film, Margaux Hemingway
and Ilona Medveczky, Priscilla Presley and Claudia Liptai, András Réz and John
Wayne, Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina és Zsazsa Gábor, Hubert de Givenchy or Dennis
Hopper are all brought together in this book. 2004 also saw the publication of a DVD with 400 pictures, entitled Martin: The Hollywood Years. Beside media appearances
and exhibitions, in 2009 he found the time to accept a commission by the local
government of Debrecen to take “Szipál-pictures” of the town, the townspeople,
the buildings, capturing the local atmosphere. A selection of these pictures was
exhibited in Debrecen’s Kölcsey Center in 2010. In acknowledgement of the fact
that he contributed a great deal to the city in which he had lived so many years, he
was awarded Ferenc Kölcsey prize in Debrecen
What lesson might all this teach to the biographer or to the reader? Maybe something
valuable to some, and nothing at all to others, depending on their disposition. What is
outstanding in this story is that a man of eighty-six can still generate interest around
him both through his past and through his present, he can pass on his knowledge
to the younger generation, and he has managed to remain a ubiquitous character.
Most importantly, however, he has created and preserved the name “Martin Szipál”
and, through the high quality of his work, has inscribed himself in the history of
Hungarian photography.
Károly Kincses
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