The Transylvanian Photographer Count: The Legacy of László Teleki

Abstract

Little has been written about László Teleki, both by his contemporaries and by the posterity. The few mentions of him are generally more concerned with his father, Sándor Teleki, who was an active participant in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The fact that László Teleki left no written accounts about his life, makes it difficult to uncover his story. We are forced to piece together his life, or to be more precise, his career story, from newspaper articles of the time. Teleki lived in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), taking no political roles, apart from a brief detour, and working for decades in various banks. In the view of the photographic historian Gil Pasternak, it is research on amateur photography that has the potential to transcend the two dominant trends in photographic history - the musicological, canonised history of photography and the new history of it, which is limited to the social use of photography. Following this idea, my article outlines the development of the amateur movements in Transylvania and Teleki's career, as well as analysing his photo. His legacy consisting of several hundred photographs provides an opportunity to learn more about the history of photography not only in Transylvania, but also in Hungary, and to outline Teleki's personality and vision, which was strongly connected and shaped by his state of being a nobleman. His camera accompanied him almost everywhere: during his travels he photographed the cities and landscapes he visited, and he never missed taking pictures of his family, leaving behind several pictures of his children and wife. But ultimately, he focused his attention on the landscapes and on capturing the scenery.

Photo: I. Album