Hungarian photography, Richard Long, Thomas Struth

As regular readers of this column will know, I am not a great admirer of photography exhibitions, but the current show in the RA’s Sackler Galleries is more enjoyable than most.

I have long loved the work of André Kertész and Brassaï, and besides presenting a lavish selection of their photographs, this show offers the context of their fellow Hungarians to further illuminate their achievement. The effect is interesting, if not entirely happy. Nothing seems to diminish Brassaï, but Kertész suffers by comparison. In the company of such relatively unknown photographers as Imre Kinszki, Rudolf Balogh and Erno Vadas, Kertész looks less strikingly original. Although the presence and example of his peers helps to explain Kertész’s work, it also slightly dilutes its magic.

The exhibition begins with a wonderful image by Balogh of a diminutive shepherd in a shoulder-to-ground fleece, looking rather like a wandering haystack flanked by dogs. There are some of Kertész’s original contact prints from c.1918, including one of a traditional Hungarian well with its winching gear attached to a living tree. In this first room there are some classic Kertész images: an underwater swimmer enveloped in ripples and reflections, then ‘Lovers’, ‘Boy Sleeping’ and ‘Circus’ — in which a couple peer through a hole in a fence, an image Lowry used much later (1963). In this section is also Károly Escher’s complex semi-abstract ‘Swing Boat’, all shadows and different weights of line. There’s also rather an amusing set of beguiling ladies, some half-naked, and a vintage oil print, by Olga Máté, showing the kind of brushmarks you’d expect in a painting.

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The high viewpoints and shadow-structures of Balogh’s ‘Milkmarket on Margarett Island’, Vadas’s ‘Procession’ and Kinszki’s ‘Morning Light’, all recall images for which Kertész later became celebrated in Paris and America.