Ferenc Berko

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Ferenc Berko (born January 28, 1916 in Nagyvárad , † March 18, 2000 in Aspen (Colorado) ) was an American photographer , photojournalist and filmmaker from Hungary . Berko is considered a pioneer of color photography .

life and work

After his mother's death in 1921, Ferenc moved to Dresden with his father, a specialist in nervous diseases. He attended schools in Dresden and Frankfurt am Main. The first recordings were made under the impression of role models such as Hein Gorny , László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Gropius . From 1933 he lived in London, where he attended grammar school. There he made the acquaintance of Emil Otto Hoppé ; he was also in contact with Marcel Lajos Breuer , György Kepes and Moholy-Nagy. After winning first prize in a photo competition, he turned intensely to photography. Several stays in Paris followed and publications in magazines such as Paris-Magazine and The Naturalist . In 1938 he moved to Bombay, where he worked as a filmmaker and photographer for the British military administration. Photojournalistic and documentary works, industrial photography, advertising, reports and portraits were then created in their own photo studio. His photographs, especially his nude studies, appeared regularly in magazines such as Lilliput, Minicam, US Camera, Popular Photography ; but his main job was portrait photographer. At the invitation of Moholy-Nagy, Berko traveled to the United States shortly after his return to Europe in 1947 to teach at the Chicago School of Design (now the Institute of Design ). In 1948/49 he worked in London. Walter Paepcke, chairman of the Container Corporation of America, brought him to Aspen in 1949 to work for his company. As a result, a documentation of the cultural activities initiated by Paepke in Aspen was created; then he lived there as a freelance photographer and filmmaker. His subjects included abstract landscape photography and architectural photography, documenting the post-war development of the city of Aspen. This was followed by exhibitions of his photographs in the Cincinnati Museum of Art , the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Photography Forum in Frankfurt am Main and the International Center of Photography Collection in New York.

bibliography

  • Ferenc Berko: 60 years of photography - The discovering eye . with contributions by Colin Ford and Helmut Gernsheim. Karl Steinorth (Ed.) Düsseldorf: Ed. Stemmle, c 1991., 1991 ISBN 3-7231-0424-X / ISBN 978-3-7231-0424-8

Lexical entry

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Obituary in The New York Times (2000)
personal data
SURNAME Berko, Ferenc
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-American photographer and photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagyvárad
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2000
Place of death Aspen (Colorado)