Gabor Szilasi
Photographer
Born in Hungary, Gabor Szilasi started out as an amateur photographer in Budapest, taking pictures of street scenes and later of the Hungarian revolution of 1956. These activities put him in such danger that he emigrated with his father to Montreal in 1959; he did not return to Hungary until 1980. Gabor worked for the Office du film du Québec, which sent him to photograph subjects in rural Quebec throughout the 1960s. During the same period, he continued his own documentary work, creating personal photographs of his adopted city and portraits of close friends and family members, which were exhibited for the first time in 1967.
Gabor is largely self-taught. His first works were made with a 35 mm camera. In 1970, he received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts that enabled him to acquire a large-format 4 x 5 camera, and he continued to document rural areas, looking for subjects willing to pose, as seen in Mme Marie-Jeanne Lessard, Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, 1973.
Gabor Szilasi was particularly close to Sam Tata (1911-2005), his mentor and a Chinese photographer who moved in the same artistic circles in Montreal. From 1972 to 1974, Szilasi was a member of the Groupe d'action photographique (GAP). From 1979 to 1995, he taught photography at Concordia University.
(Source: Art Canada Institute)
