Gabor Szilasi

Career Highlights

Gabor Szilasi settled in Montreal after immigrating to Canada in 1957. He was naturalized in 1964. From 1959 to 1971 he was photographer at the Office du film du Québec. He was photography teacher at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal (1970–80) and associate professor (1980–95) at Concordia University until he became adjunct professor.

Long recognized as an exceptional documentary photographer for his distinctive views of Quebec culture, his initial success followed the completion of two important series, Charlevoix (1970) and La Beauce (1973). Produced with a large-format camera, these images present a sensitive, often whimsical portrait of rural life. Subsequently he began to work with colour, producing primarily studies of domestic interiors (1976), sometimes pairing these with portraits (1978–79). Rich with detail and subtle rendering of light and form, the photographs reveal a keenly observant eye.

During the 1980s Szilasi continued to produce portraits and architectural studies, working with a variety of camera formats and techniques. He explored the singular beauty of Montreal's architectural heritage in panorama views produced with a banquet camera (1982) and in various projects commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (1989–95). Although best known for his images of Quebec, significant bodies of work resulted from his sojourns in Italy, Hungary and Poland (1986, 1987, 1990). In the mid-1990s Szilasi investigated the psychological portrait with large-format black and white Polaroid photography.

Honours

Gabor Szilasi has received several awards and his works have been acquired by numerous public and corporate collections. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and extensively published. In 1990 he was commissioned by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) to produce a series of photographs of Clause Monet's gardens at Giverny, France, as part of the exhibition Monet at Giverny: chefs-d'oeuvres du Musée Marmottan. In 1997 the MMFA presented a retrospective of his work.

He was named a winner of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2010.