Interview with visual anthropologist & critic András Bán

Hungarian Interview Series (with English subtitles)

András Bán (1951), visual anthropologist, teacher, art critic, has been publishing reviews and essays specifically on fine-art photography and contemporary art since 1973. He became interested in visual anthropology studies during a trip to the United States in the late 1980s; from 1993, he taught visual anthropology at the Department of Cultural and Visual Anthropology, University of Miskolc, where later he was associate professor. As co-founder of the Private Photo and Film Archives’s research group, launched within the Institute for Culture (Művelődéskutató Intézet), he played a significant role in the collection and systematic scientific processing of amateur photography and film in Hungary. In 2007, he initiated the foundation of the Hungarian Society for the History of Photography, and between 2014 and 2018, he worked as Chief Curator at the Kunsthalle Budapest.

A more extensive written version of the interview will soon be accessible on Eidolon Journal.

Interview: Róza Tekla Szilágyi, Endre Cserna
Video: Dávid Biró
Music: Áron Lörinczi
Design: L2 Studio

All the photographs displayed in the video were generously donated by András Bán.

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