Béla Kása

(1952, Pécs)

He graduated in Cologne in 1979 with a degree in artistic photography, as a student of Prof. Arno Jansen. He is one of the most important visual chroniclers of the disappearing peasant music culture. He has produced photo reports for the magazines Stern and GEO on ethnographic subjects. His photographs reflect intimate human relationships. He has captured folk communities, musicians, shepherds, nomads, and wandering gypsies in their own environment, mainly in Transylvania. He plays traditional folk instruments himself and collects folk music, which makes him even more qualified to choose this theme. „In a figurative sense, what he holds in his hands is not a camera, but a musical instrument. Its sound demands attention. Its sound is a cry! A cry for the preservation of vanishing cultures and beautiful human behaviours.” In 2019, he received the Rudolf Balogh Award. He is a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.