Carl Lutz (image credit Fortepan and Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zurich / Agnes Hirschi)

Miklos Tamási, founder of Fortepan, launched the free online photo archive after finding a collection of pictures in a pile of garbage on a Hungarian curbside. He named the site after the Forte film factories in Hungary, and debuted it in 2010 with 5,000 images. Since then, Fortepan has quickly expanded. Today it contains over 114,000 photographs taken by Hungarians between the years 1900 and 1990, and its first-ever exhibit opened in April at the Hungarian National Gallery.

Fortepan’s manager András Török shared the archive’s story last week while lecturing at Manhattan’s American-Hungarian Library. The timing of the lecture was impeccable. The European Parliament election results had just come in, and the far right had made gains across the continent. In Hungary, the right-wing Fidesz Party won an additional seat and 52% of the vote. Its leader is Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Since his election in 2010, he has rewritten Hungary’s constitution, taken control of newspapers, and propagated anti-immigration conspiracy theories. In such a political climate, it’s no wonder that Fortepan, which is devoted to visual fact and testimony, has become a national phenomenon.

“There’s very little free press,” Török told me in a conversation after his lecture. “Our political life isn’t really free.” Hungary’s historical narrative has become inconsistent. One recent controversy involved the unveiling of a monument in Budapest commemorating Hungary’s role in World War II, which suggests the country entered the war involuntarily, as the result of German invasion. In truth, Hungary collaborated with the Nazis as an Axis Power until 1944, when Hitler installed the Arrow Cross puppet government. This revisionism illustrates Orbán’s nationalist agenda. A resource like Fortepan, which includes images from WWII, helps maintain Hungary’s true history.

During his lecture, Török highlighted several rare Holocaust-related photos that took extensive effort to acquire. One shows a somber man sitting upright behind his desk. It’s Carl Lutz, the Swiss diplomat responsible for saving thousands of Hungarian Jews inside the basement of his glass factory in Budapest. Images of Lutz’s Glass House from the war-torn 1940s are practically nonexistent, but after six months of correspondence with Lutz’s daughter and the Zurich Institute of Technology, Török was able to obtain two. Now anyone with an internet connection can view and download these pictures.

The Glass House (image credit Fortepan and Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zurich / Agnes Hirschi)The Glass House (image credit Fortepan and Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zurich / Agnes Hirschi)

The editors of Fortepan are aware that their archive reflects shifting power dynamics over the 20th century. One reason so few photos from World War II exist is that Jews were not allowed to own cameras. Before that, in the early days of home photography, only the wealthy could afford the equipment. Accordingly, Fortepan contains many scenes of idyllic upper-class life: children sledding, friends in knit sweaters holding each other’s waists.

To correct the overly rosy situation this suggests, Fortepan encourages donations from all Hungarians, including those who emigrated or were forced to flee. The site’s policies are also written with an egalitarian point of view. It’s free to access, and users can submit their own tags to index entries, which invites the public to help democratically shape the archive. And by encouraging high levels of transparency and open dialogue between its editorial board and the public, Fortepan promotes the free speech that some fear is disappearing. In turn, Hungarians have embraced Fortepan as a public service. “Because we don’t make any money from the site,” Török explained, “we have established public trust.” Civilians often choose to donate to Fortepan instead of national libraries or museums.

Amidst political dissatisfaction, there’s still room for national pride. Fortepan makes a point of celebrating Hungary’s successes. For its 100,000th entry, they approached prizewinning author Péter Nádas for a contribution. He donated what Török calls an “early selfie”: an analog self-portrait from 1958, when Nádas was a teenager experimenting with his camera in a mirror. As Török continues his work on Fortepan, he remains cautiously optimistic. After all, engaging with a century’s worth of photographs puts today’s political environment in perspective. Hungary has survived far worse than Orbán, and Török believes that eventually, the country’s youth will shift the government back toward democracy. “That’s why I go to the gym three times a week,” he said, laughing. “I want to be alive to see it happen.”

Young Péter Nádas’s self-portrait (photo credit Fortepan / Péter Nádas)

The post In Hungary, an Online Photo Archive Fights Revisionist History appeared first on Hyperallergic.

via aleksey godin

Thousands of monks and nuns forced out of the Yachen Gar Tibetan Buddhist Center in western China’s Sichuan province and back to their hometowns have been “rounded up” by authorities and sent for “political re-education,” according to Tibetan sources.

In a campaign beginning in May, the removals targeted mainly residents who had come from areas outside Sichuan to join the remote and sprawling temple complex in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) prefecture’s Palyul (Baiyu) county, which until recent years had housed an estimated 10,000 monks, nuns, and lay practitioners devoted to scriptural study and meditation.

Speaking to RFA’s Tibetan Service, a Tibetan living in the area said most of the monks and nuns were from Jomda (Jiangda) and Palbar (Bianba) counties, in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s (TAR) Chamdo (Changdu) prefecture, and had been sent there for political re-education.

“The Chinese authorities have ordered that the number of monks and nuns staying at Yachen Gar not exceed more than 4,700, and because of that many monks and nuns have been evicted from the institute,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Those monks and nuns who were forcefully returned to their birthplaces have now been rounded up by local Chinese police and made to attend political re-education classes [at detention centers] in their hometowns.”

The source said that due to “overflowing numbers” at a detention center in Jomda, “many have been sent to Chamdo city for political re-education.”

“As soon as they are brought to the detention centers, their cellphones are confiscated, rendering them incommunicado with the outside,” the source added.

A second source based in southern India told RFA that some “70 monks and nuns are being held in Jomda and are undergoing thorough political re-education” after being summoned by police upon their return to their hometowns.

“The monks and nuns are forced to wear the clothes of laypersons at the detention center and the Chinese authorities make them denounce [Tibetan spiritual leader] the Dalai Lama on a daily basis, as well as memorize political propaganda, which they are later tested on,” said the source, who also declined to be named.

“These monks and nuns could be held for political re-education for another several months before they are released to their families. After that, they will be restricted from re-enrolling with any other monasteries or relocating elsewhere.”

Last month, sources told RFA that since the removals began in May, around 3,500 monks and nuns had been forced to leave Yachen Gar, while around 600 Chinese officials had been permanently stationed at the center to “maintain a tight watch” over those who remain and check on all outside visitors.

To avoid emotional scenes between residents being expelled and their friends who stay behind, no one may accompany those being evicted as they are brought to buses to be taken away, they said.

An unfolding strategy

Restrictions on Yachen Gar and the better-known Larung Gar complex in Sichuan’s Serthar (Seda) county are part of “an unfolding political strategy” aimed at controlling the influence and growth of these important centers for Tibetan Buddhist study and practice, a Tibetan advocacy group said in a March 2017 report.

“[Both centers] have drawn thousands of Chinese practitioners to study Buddhist ethics and receive spiritual teaching since their establishment, and have bridged Tibetan and Chinese communities,” the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet said.

During 2017 and 2018, at least 4,820 Tibetan and Han Chinese monks and nuns were removed from Larung Gar, with over 7,000 dwellings and other structures torn down beginning in 2001, according to sources in the region.

Last month, Tenzin Dorjee, chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, called China’s restrictions on Yachen Gar an “egregious violation of the freedom of religion,” telling RFA at the time that restrictions in Tibet were “going from bad to worse.”

Reported by Kunsang Tenzin and Pema Ngodup for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.