[Leica] Béla Kalman has passed away

[scleroplex at gmail.com (scleroplex)]

*B?la T. Kalman, at 89; photographer who had an uncanny eye for*

*his subjects*


*By Gloria Negri*

*Globe Staff  July 16, 2011*


To look at a photograph taken by Hungarian-born B?la T. Kalman is to witness
a work of art.


Known worldwide for his distinctive photographic style, Mr. Kalman was given
the title of master in 1984 by the

International Federation of Photographic Art. At that time, he was the
federation?s only master in the United States.


His work is included in the permanent collections of 18 museums.


Mr. Kalman explained that his magic behind the camera was to look through
the lens with his fabled ?third eye?? -

?The Third Eye?? is the title of one of his many books - and capture the
essence of whatever he was shooting,

portraits, street scenes, farm workers, the temples of Angkor in Cambodia,
seashells, and flowers, all breathtaking

enough to hang in museums and galleries. He even transformed an onion into a
thing of beauty.

His third eye, an intuitive inner lens ?enabled him to visualize
compositions before framing them in his viewfinder,??

said his stepson, Eric Zimberg of San Diego.

Mr. Kalman, a photographer for more than 55 years who formerly owned and ran
Studio 350 on Newbury Street in

Boston, died June 26 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis of lung and cardiac
complications. He was 89 and looking

forward to his 90th birthday on July 29.

Mr. Kalman and his wife, Edna, lived in Boston and summered in Centerville
on Cape Cod.

?Bela liked to tell a story with his images,?? said Glenn Engman, who worked
at Studio 350 for Mr. Kalman and said

he learned a lot from his generosity of information before striking out on
his own with On Target Inc., a digital

imaging lab in Boston.

?I?ve told a lot of people that B?la was kind of like a slave driver and
expected a lot from you,?? Engman said. ?When I

did work there, I was glad because he was so demanding and was just as hard
on himself.??

Mr. Kalman had Studio 350 for 25 or 30 years, his wife said.

?He was a phenomenal person . . . with an amazing sense of humor, who made
the visual case for photography as

art,?? said Elizabeth Ives Hunter, executive director of the Cape Cod Museum
of Art, where Mr. Kalman had an

exhibit. ?He was generous to a fault, a consistent donor to the museum.
Because of him, I see photography now with

a different set of eyes.??

Mr. Kalman?s work has also been exhibited in Santa Fe, where he and his wife
spent part of 15 years. Longtime

friend David Scheinbaum, chairman of the photography department at Santa Fe
University of Art and Design who

owns a gallery with his wife, described Mr. Kalman as ?a very gentle soul, a
wonderful human being and

philanthropist.??

?Besides having success in his own right, both in the way of commercial and
fine arts photography, he had many

books published and has exhibited in galleries through the world.??
Scheinbaum said.

?B?la was an incredible support to young artists,?? he said. ?If someone new
were having an exhibit, B?la would be

the first to purchase a print. Both he and his wife encouraged young people
in their creativity.??

Scheinbaum lauded Mr. Kalman?s eagerness to keep in step with new
photographic technology, ?unlike a lot of

people in that generation who tend to stay with what they know.??

?Most of his generation used film and worked in a darkroom,?? Scheinbaum
said. ?B?la totally embraced digital

photography when it started to become a reality 20 years ago. He was as
excited as a young photographer.??

His photographs are included in many handsome books. One of them, ?Indian
Country: America?s Sacred Land,?? has

a script by author Tony Hillerman.

B?la Tibor Kalman was born in Budapest to Sandor and Paula (Kovacs) Kalman.
His father was a journalist. Mr.

Kalman?s biography in his book, ?The Third Eye,?? says he did not own a
camera as a boy but had a photographic

memory.

He showed an interest in the theater early and ?years later, became
Hungary?s best-known theatrical photographer.??

The outbreak of World War II prevented Mr. Kalman from studying at Columbia
University. He graduated from the

Berzsenyi Gimnazium in Hungary in 1939, earning his master?s degree there in
1943.

During World War II, Mr. Kalman and his brother, Pista, as Jews, were called
up for labor camp duty for about a year

by the Nazis who occupied their country. At first, according to his stepson,
they were sent to an overnight camp and

then to a day labor camp, from which they escaped by impersonating
rubble-clearing engineers.

After the war, in 1952, Mr. Kalman opened Kalman Foto in Budapest, but the
Soviets nationalized his studio,

something he could not accept, his stepson said. By stealth, Mr. Kalman fled
his homeland in 1956.

It took him two weeks to get to the Austrian border. He found asylum there
before an aunt in Chicago sponsored his

coming to the United States.

In Chicago, he worked as a photographer for Life magazine before moving to
New York. He moved to Boston in

1960, became an American citizen in 1962, and had his first exhibit here in
1964.

At a Newbury Street gallery, Edna Zimberg of Boston had purchased a
photograph of flowers by Mr. Kalman. They

met and talked. Both divorced, they married in 1965, and she would travel
with him to many photo shoots, including

in Cambodia, the Caribbean, and Europe.

?He was a very kind and very gentle man with very, very blue eyes, very
remarkable and very stubborn about certain

things,?? she said.?

Her children were 6 and 8 at the time, and he ?took them on as his own,??
she said. They even went on their

honeymoon with them in St. Croix. ?He was a very good father, and both
children use photography in their work.??

His stepdaughter, Abby Zimberg of San Francisco, a graphic designer,
described him as sensitive and ?definitely an

intellectual, sometimes complicated with a big personality.??

He also loved reading, chess, plants, and his late dog, Charlie.

In addition to his wife, stepson, and stepdaughter, he leaves two
stepgrandchildren.

A private gathering is planned.

A reception in his honor will be held at the Photographic Resource Center,
832 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, at 6

p.m. on July 27.

In ?The Third Eye,?? Mr. Kalman also included photographs of the art work of
the late Hungarian artist Gyorgy Kepes,

who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, and his tribute
to Mr. Kalman.

?Though the spectrum of his interest is varied and rich,?? Kepes wrote, ?his
strongest pictures are those where he was

truly enjoying nature?s vistas. But Kalman doesn?t close his eyes to the
realities of this world. Guided by a warm

heart, he constantly searches for ways to reveal hardship and blind alleys
of the 20th century. Because he sees in

the deepest sense beyond the surface, his photographs are more than mere
competent poetical facsimiles of reality,

they are moving metaphors. His quiet but powerful images show the drama and
the richness of our multicolored and

infinite universe.??

Gloria Negri can be reached at negri at globe.com.

? Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.