Instead of artworks, the new exhibition at Kieselbach Gallery guides us into the dense fabric of 20th-century Hungarian history written in letters—through the photographs of Fortepan and the help of artificial intelligence. Dreaming in the happy days of peace, nostalgic retro time travel, everyday moments that became symbols, and startlingly absurd situations—the carefree joys of entertainment and the harrowing dramas of history. Pictures and letters at once. Private Hungary brought to life in a traditional way and with artificial intelligence.

The exhibition is based on Miklós Tamási’s first book, Fortepan ABC, just published by Kieselbach Gallery. The author is the tireless rescuer and inexhaustible treasure-keeper of digitized private photographs, and the founding editor of the deservedly popular Fortepan. The online archive has filled a crucial gap by saving private photographs otherwise doomed to destruction and making them accessible. But today, the digitized Fortepan images gain new life: artificial intelligence feeds on them, reshapes them, and recreates them. Standing at the threshold of the AI era, the exhibition also seeks to answer the pressing question: to what extent will this new technology change the way we see our past? Will history become more vivid—or more false?

For years, Miklós Tamási hunted for the archive’s most fascinating captioned photographs—those images whose visual silence is made to speak by letters. Because captions strike at the nerve centers of 20th-century history. Tamási knows exactly where these neuralgic points lie, having studied millions of photographs. No one has seen and analyzed more Hungarian (private) photos than he. From the essence of this collection, he compiled the unique photo album Fortepan ABC. With the texts attached to the selected images, he teaches us how to see—handing the reader the traditional key to photographic visuality.

Of nearly six hundred images, 95 are on display at the exhibition. These chosen photographs guide us through the alphabet of the 20th century as captured by the camera: neon signs and posters, graffiti and street nameplates, swastika propaganda and red-star agitation, advertisements and subcultural messages. Letters long vanished, preserved only by Fortepan’s images. Alongside them appear the people who created, looked at, advertised, used, suffered from, or merely witnessed those vanished letters. The exhibition takes the viewer-reader and the reader-viewer on a rollercoaster of historical emotions. The alphabetically arranged themes are accompanied by Miklós Tamási’s perceptive, witty explanations, teaching us how to “read” pictures. In some cases, the images begin to move, filled with apparent, false—or all too real—life, thanks to artificial intelligence. Private Hungary through the eyes of a new era.

Rieder Gábor