In 1994, the Hungarian-born architectural photographer Balthazar Korab was contacted by a Protocol Officer in Washington, D.C., and asked to send a selection of forty prints to the U.S. State Department, twelve of which would be personally selected by President William J. Clinton as a state gift to Árpád Göncz, the then-president of Hungary. The criteria spelled out by the State Department for the selection of the gift was rather straightforward: “A creative work by an American that contains a definitive link to Hungary.”
Korab titled his selection, “The Mark of Man on the Land,” and chose images that reflected “the extraordinary urban development in the United States, which has occurred largely at the expense of rural life.” The set of images, on view as part of the exhibition Balthazar Korab: Portrait of a Nation, represent a broad spectrum of cultural expressions that range from America’s agrarian foundations to its urban and industrial growth. Examined more closely, however, and the images reveal a much more complex, if not complicated, narrative about America through an immigrant's lens.
Join the School of Architecture's John Comazzi, author of Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography, for a gallery talk on Friday, November 10, at 12 pm in the Elmaleh Gallery.
BALTHAZAR KORAB (1926–2013)
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1926, Balthazar Korab began working as an architect for Eero Saarinen at his office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1955. His work at that office afforded him the opportunity to develop his craft as both an architect and as a photographer. On work for projects in the Saarinen office, he experimented and explored photography's uses in documenting working models, as well as finished structures. While known for iconic images of modernist architectural masterpieces, he also spent time on less commercial projects, photographing Michigan and the Midwest, Italy, and American car culture among other topics.
