MUSEUM | A Curator’s Insight with Klára Szarka on the exhibition *Our Recent Encounters: 1976–2026—Hemző and Hemző Prize Winners*

With this exhibition, we pay tribute to Károly Hemző’s legendary exhibition *My Encounters*, which opened exactly fifty years ago in 1976, featuring vintage photographs that the artist largely enlarged by hand, and we juxtapose them with the visual perspectives of young 21st-century artists—the winners and finalists of the Károly Hemző Award.

Although Hemző never taught photography anywhere, he still had an impact on subsequent generations. The winners of the Károly Hemző Award, established in 2013—András Hajdú D., Simon Móricz-Sabján, Balázs Mohai, Zsófia Pályi, István Bielik, Sándor Csudai, László Végh, Márton Mónus, Judit Ruprech, Noémi Napsugár Melegh, Bálint Szajki, and András Zoltai—and the works of its finalists attest to the fact that they represent the defining generation of 21st-century Hungarian photography.