Gabor Szilasi

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1928, Gabor Szilasi first became interested in photography while in medical school in 1948.[3] Largely self-taught, Gabor Szilasi started to photograph in Hungary in 1952 when he purchased his first camera, a Zorkij. In 1956, he documented the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Budapest and shortly afterwards fled the country.[1] He emigrated to Canada in 1957, settling in Montreal.[2][4] From 1959 to 1971, he was photographer at the Office du film du Québec. Sam Tata introduced him to the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and encouraged his social-documentary photography. In 1966, he was introduced to the work of the American documentary tradition as practiced by Paul Strand and Walker Evans while studying at the Thomas More Institute.[1] He was photography teacher at the Collège du Vieux Montreal (1970–1980) and associate professor (1980–1995) and then adjunct professor at Concordia University.[5] The work he made of communities such as Charlevoix, PQ (1970), Montreal`s art community (1960–1980), or was commissioned to make in Italy, Hungary and Poland (1986, 1987, 1990)[5] or of Hungary to which he returned in 1980, 1994 and 1995[1] aimed at the modernist photography ideal of precision, luminosity and permanence which increased the beauty and historic value of his prints.[6] He used the camera to take views of urban environments, individual portraits or gallery openings.

After 20 years of photographing in black-and-white, around the mid-70s, Szilasi began to use colour to describe certain cultural and social characteristics.[7] He began photographing interiors, mostly living spaces, in colour and later combined colour with black-and-white to convey portraits and interiors. Around 1982, he began photographing electric signs.[7]

He is the subject of Gabor, a 2022 documentary film by Joannie Lafrenière.[8]

In 1997, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts organized a travelling retrospective of his work titled Gabor Szilasi: Photographs 1954–1996.[5] Monet's Garden was shown at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1999.[9] In 2017, Montreal's McCord Museum exhibited a 20-year selection of his unpublished photographs of the art world in Montreal, titled The Art World in Montreal, 1960–1980.[10][4][11]

• Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, 2010[5][12]
• Paul-Émile Borduas prize for visual arts, 2010[3]
• Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary Award, 2018[13]
• Companion of the arts and letters of Quebec[14]

His work is included in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec,[2] the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal,[15] the National Gallery of Canada[1] and many other collections. He is represented by the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Szilasi is married to the photographer Doreen Lindsay.[16]