József Plohn

Photographer József Plohn recorded the people and their lifestyle of the Hódmezővásárhely area from 1882 to 1925. He was born in Makó in 1869, but lived and worked in Hódmezővásárhely all his life. His father, Illés Plohn, founded the „Photographic and Painting Art Institute” in 1868. József Plohn took over his father’s business after he was discharged from the military in the 1890’s.

Around the turn of the century József Plohn’s studio was the meeting place and center of artistic life in Hódmezővásárhely. Some of the artists, interested in folk life themselves, called the everyday life of the people to József Plohn’s attention. They inspired him to record the life of the peasants on his photo-plates. For three and a half decades the photographer recorded the life in the streets of the city and in the country. He was obsessed with his work, and he never tired of carrying around the heavy equipment of those days. According to his notes he took over 3000 photographs on 18 x 24cm and 13 x 18cm glass-plates, of which more then half are lost. Although he worked long and hard, he never obtained financial security.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s he wanted to publish an album: „Pictures of the people’s life on the Great Hungarian Plain”. His dream never materialized because of lack of funds and support.

The disillusioned József Plohn’s life ended tragically, in 1944, when he died in a deportation camp in Austria.

400 of his pictures were shown to the public at the Hungarian National Ethnographical Museum for the first time in 1981.

The American Hungarian Museum of Passaic, NJ was able to display 40 rare photographs from the archives of the Hungarian National Ethnographical Museum in Budapest in 1991.