The Centenary Album of Professional Hungarian Acting in Transylvania – Theatre and Photography in 19th-century Ko-lozsvár

Abstract

The centenary commemoration of the beginnings of professional Hungarian acting in Transylvania – organized in the theatre of Kolozsvár in 1892 – concluded with a physical, collectible product: a memorial album that included not only studies about the past and present of the theatre together with the details of the festivities, but ample and impressive visual material as well. The paper focuses on these photographs, reflecting on the dialogue between text and image, and on the very specific perception of time during the celebrations: apart from the discursive level, the past and present of Transylvanian acting, 1792 and 1892, appear also visually next to each other on the photographs.