Budapest. the First Golden Age

To celebrate on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Budapest, the Hungarian National Gallery is hosting a special exhibition of over a hundred photos evoking the capital city during its first golden age, the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The pictures of the city, previously unknown in Hungary, were made by a German postcard manufacturer, and they were discovered by the editors of Fortepan in the collection of Deutsche Fotothek in Dresden. These views are supplemented with extraordinary 3D stereograms of the young metropolis taken by Frigyes Schoch. For the first time in Hungary, the Hungarian National Gallery presents photos of Budapest taken between 1903 and 1912 by the German postcard manufacturer Brück & Sohn, which capture not only its emblematic edifices but also a number of everyday scenes being played out in its back streets. The second set of images consists of 3D-effect stereograms produced by the Swiss-born engineer and amateur photographer Frigyes Schoch, offering a more personal perspective of Budapest as it evolved into a global city. Some of the locations and buildings in these early photos have changed almost unrecognisably or were sadly lost in the devastation of war, so alongside these images, visitors to the exhibition are also presented with pictures of the same places from later times or the present day.