A díjnyertes "Család" - The award-winning "Family"

László Török, the artist thinks of the past, 2015 @Edit Garai

I just accidently popped into the discussion with Laszlo Torok photographer at Mai Mano Photographic Museum. I went to an exhibition opening but I mixed the dates, so I could only find this dialogue. Actually, it was a nice experience.
I knew this picture from books, my studies but the story behind ite was not clear for me. How could he make it? It doesn't look like a normal family portrait! The picture was shot in 1972 in the suburban flat of the artist who at that time worked as a photo lab assistant in MTI (Hungarian News Agency). He was thinking about this picture for months. His aim was to create a non-customary, outrages family portrait. This picture is a result of planning and some accidental things. He asked one of his friend, Ibolya to take the nude part but the old couple and the boy from the neighbourhood were only asked to assist for a kind of "arty" project. The photographer let them sit in the room, organized them and saying nothing to them about a nude girl and then just called in Ibolya. And at htat moment he just started shooting them. One roll with a big format camera, 5 minutes and the pictures were ready. This one above won the 1st prize in General Features category of World Press Photo in 1973.
In MTI the atmosphere frozen when it turned out that this young, 25 year-old assistant who is actually not even a photographer  won the 1st prize. Everyone got really jealous and malicious with him (that was a communist era in Hungary at that time), and they emphasized that he is NOT a photographer and never will be. So, this is how Laszlo Török's photographic career started.