Imre BENKŐ

1943, Budapest

He took up photography in his twenties and spent 18 years as a photojournalist with Hungarian news agency MTI, and later worked as a senior reporter at the magazines Képes 7 and Európa. He also worked for the Paris-based Wostok Press photo agency. He is interested in the visual interpretation of the real world, the unique and documentary depiction of people and their surroundings. A founder member of the Studio of Young Photographers, he has won prizes in the World Press Photo competition several times. He was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund (New York) scholarship in 1992 for his series documenting the decline of the smelting industry in Ózd. He has taught documentary photography at the Hungarian University of Art and Design. His works have been displayed at more than 70 solo and several hundred group exhibitions all around the world. Main awards: Balázs Béla Award (1981), Pulitzer Memorial Prize (1991), Artist of Merit (2004), Hungarian Photography Grand Prize (2004), Artist of Excellence (2016), Prima Primissima Award (2016). His works are held in numerous major public (Hungarian Museum of Photography, Hungarian National Museum, National Széchenyi Library, New York Public Library, Archive of Modern Conflict, Toronto) and private collections. A monograph on his work was published in 2018.