Ákos Birkás has been engaged with the genre of portrait and (self-)portrait since the beginning of his career. In the sixties, he tried to transcend the expected, realistic approach of the age with an existentially motivated, deeply experienced, personal portrait painting. Then, in the early seventies, he turned to painting (history) and its traditional genres with a conceptual, critical approach, by the means of photography. Between 1977 and 1978, he made about 250 portraits, and then about 170 photo enlargements of his close acquaintance, Ferenc K., of which 60 are on display. The man with a characteristic face is photographed against a white or black background, like a study, in changing light. The head almost fills the photograph, the lighting is plastic, the facial expression varies slightly from image to image. The face does not express intense emotions, the image is objective. But which is the man’s real face? How can the essence of the portrait be captured? How does time manifest in such a large-scale series? The series of images is more than a single portrait: reproduction gives the work a new quality. This recognition and the elementary image structure appearing here foreshadow Ákos Birkás’s “Head” paintings of the eighties.
Krisztina Szipőcs