Light and Form: Modern Architecture and Photography 1927-1950

Luxury villas, elegant apartment houses with lifts running in glass tubes, a power plant’s control room that evokes an ancient spacecraft, trendy shop interiors, and streamlined cinemas—all were shot shortly after their completion for the architectural magazine Tér és Forma (Space and Form). This publication was the leading medium for promoting the Modern Movement’s ideas in Hungary between 1928 and 1948, a period in which Hungarian architects created designs ranking among Modernism’s best works worldwide. Today these photographs are invaluable source material, not only documenting buildings but also demonstrating that architectural photographs can be artworks in their own right. Essays by photographic historian Ibolya Csengel-Plank and architectural historians Virág Hajdú and Pál Ritoók explore how the Modern Movement influenced Hungarian architects and how their buildings were photographed. The bulk of the book is devoted to more than 60 examples of architecture and interior design, presented through superb photography, accompanied by short building descriptions and comments on the images, and concluded with an illustrated introduction to key architects, photographers, and cityscapes from 1930s Budapest. This bilingual edition includes English and Hungarian.