AMSTERDAM.-HUP gallery Amsterdam presents a retrospective of the best works from the oeuvre of photographers Ata Kandó and Eva Besnyö. Hungary was the country where both Ata Kandó (1913) and Eva Besnyö (1910-2003) have their roots. They first met in 1952 and from that moment the two became best friends. Ata and Eva always hoped to do an exhibit together. We are very pleased that we now can make that a reality. Both women have had a great influence on photography and the fact they were best friends strengthened the influence of Hungarian photography in Holland.

The works exhibited in the exposition 'Ata & Eva' are about 50 mostly vintage silver prints. HUP Gallery will show a selection of works from Kandó's whole career, many well known through the publications 'Dromen in het woud', 'Kalypso en Nausikaa', and 'Slaaf of Dood', but also various lesser known works from her oeuvre.

From Besnyö a selection of the 'Keurcollectie' is shown. In the early eighties the photographer put her 'keurcollectie' together with the help of her assistant Tineke de Ruiter. A choice of 200 of her best photos.

Ata Kandó was born in Budapest and left for Paris in 1932 with her first husband, the artist Gyula Kandó. After the war she worked as an assistant at the photo agency Magnum. Later she married Ed van der Elsken and in 1954 she moved with him to Holland. In the 50's and 60's the Hungarian born Ata Kandó was one of the most important reportage photographers nationally and internationally. Her photos of the Hungarian refugees at the Austrian border during the revolution of 1956 are world famous, as well as the reportages that she made in the 60's about the different indian tribes in Venezuela. Earlier she worked as a fashion photographer for the great Parisian Fashion houses such as Dior.

Eva Marianna Besnyö was an Hungarian-Dutch photographer. Eva grew up with two sisters in a liberal Jewish family. At the age of 18 she followed an education in advertising and portrait photography given by Josef Pecsi. He stimulated her to go to Berlin where she met the Dutch film maker John Fernhout. Fernhout, the son of the painter Charley Toorop, returned to Holland in 1930. Because of the rise of the Nazis Eva Besnyö left Germany in 1932 and followed Fernhout to Holland where they married in 1933. Until the Second World War the themes of her photographs contained a lot of social subjects, but she was also interested in photographing architecture. During the German occupation she had to hide and became active in the resistence.

In 1945 she divorced Fernhout and a year later married graphic designer Wim Brusse with whom she had a son and daughter. After the children were older she began to photograph again and in the beginning of the 70's she became very involved in photographing the actions of the feminist group 'Dolle Mina'.

As she got older she had problems with her eyes and had to stop photographing. The last years of her life she lived in the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren and passed away in 2003 at 93 years of age.