Ata Kandó – Hungarian Refugees and Slave or Dead

^{Ata Kandó, Yecuana Indiaan, Santa Maria De Erevato, Venezuela, 1962.}

The Cobra Museum shows work by Ata Kandó in line with the Kati Horna overview. Just like Kati Horna, Ata Kandó was a committed documentary photographer, Hungarian by origin and trained by József Pécsi.

Ata Kandó believed a good photograph had both an artistic and a social aspect, and the best photographers were those who optimally combined these two qualities. On the one hand, her work is characterised by her depiction of the personal, intimate life of her children and of animals. On the other hand, she profiled herself as a socially engaged photographer. Kandó’s socially engaged visual narratives, for example of Hungarian refugees and inhabitants of the Amazon forest (Slave or Dead), fit in with the humanistic documentary tradition of the 1950s. Both series can be seen at the Cobra Museum alongside the work of Kati Horna and Eva Besnyö.