Tamás Révész’s independent photographic practice is often regarded as one of the defining examples of lyrical documentary photography. Like his role model André Kertész, his photographs are emotionally resonant and shaped by the small, fleeting moments of daily life.
Installed across three rooms at Kunsthalle Budapest, the exhibition presents nearly one hundred photographs exploring the many facets of the human condition. The selection ranges from the snapshot aesthetics of spontaneous street photography to the dynamism of photojournalism and the architectural rhythms of the modern city. Together, the photographs form a visual memoir spanning Budapest and New York, Ecuador and Sicily—a rich body of work that captures moments that are at once heartbreaking and uplifting.
Révész began his career in the late 1960s as a photojournalist and picture editor. After starting at Képes Újság, he worked as a staff photographer for Tükör and later Új Tükör. A leading figure in Hungarian photography, he taught at the School of Journalism of the Association of Hungarian Journalists (MÚOSZ), the International School of Journalism, and universities in Hungary and abroad. He has served on the boards of numerous Hungarian and international professional organizations. He has also been the lead organizer of the World Press Photo exhibition in Hungary for more than three decades. In addition, he served on the international jury of World Press Photo in 1988 and 1989. In 1990, in Körmend, he created his iconic photograph of the Soviet troop withdrawal from Hungary, a defining image of the political transformation of Eastern Europe, which received a World Press Photo “Honorable Mention” the following year. Alongside his long-term photographic projects, he completed assignments for prominent publications including Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, People, and International Wildlife.
Révész first came to the attention of both the profession and the wider public in 1977 with his debut photobook, Búcsú a cigányteleptől (Farewell to the Gypsy Colony) (Tamás Ervin – Tamás Révész, Kossuth Publishing, Budapest, 1977), and the accompanying exhibition at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. Since then, nearly a hundred solo exhibitions and even more group exhibitions have featured his photographs. In 1997, he was awarded the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial Prize for his book Budapest. In 1996, he moved to New York with his family and created his own photo essay exploring the "Big Apple," following in the footsteps of many iconic photographers before him. W. W. Norton & Company published a selection of these photographs under the title New York in 2000. In 2012, he was invited to head the Photojournalism Program at the Budapest College of Communication and Business (now Budapest Metropolitan University, METU).
In recognition of his decades of dedication to organizing the World Press Photo exhibitions in Hungary, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau by the King of the Netherlands in 2025.
He has been living in Budapest again since 2016.
Curator: Zsuzsanna Tulipán
Cover image: Balloon-blowing contest, Budapest, 1960 © Tamás Révész, detail