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WEEKS OF COMPETITION CAME TO AN END

WINNER TO BE PICKED AT THE LA PLAZA  HOTEL AND RESTAURANT – BUDAPEST

An evening not with the Spanish eyes but with the Spanish olives!

Many may know, Spain is the world’s largest food producer and exporter of olives annually produce 500,000 tons of it. Hungary’s most important source of olives are from Spain. Around 80-85% of the olives are available in Hungary from Spain groves. The Spanish olives cannot help it, they are delicious and don’t wishnit saying a word they are very healthy – just 150 grams of olives hold 100 calories, a popular snack would only roll up to 450-550 calories.

Whether it’s the rush or the hush, the sun, the sea, breathtaking mountains, the friendly people, the colorful Fiesta, the stunning flamenco or the variety of the fine tapas, there is no doubt that  the Spanish gastronomic values ​​at stake has an enviable reputation.  Most probably they have the key to have opened the door to their success of purely natural ingredients, as it is true of the world-famous delicious, nutritious within the varied olives.

In Spain the olive is much more than just a part of a fruit. It stands in the central of the Spanish Mediterranean lifestyle. According to tradition, the Spanish olive symbolize the peace and wisdom. The sense of Mediterranean tempting delicacies floating in the air-filled the entire place and there were huge bowls of black and green olives with many-many spices and ingredients from Spain to add that extra touch for every taste was placed where ever you looked on neat tables.

The autumn has surely entered our geographic area when the opening evening at the La Plaza Restaurant greeting the invited guests and celebrities.  Spain brought the heart to Budapest! The purpose of the gathering was to announce the winner of the recently closed competition of Authentic southern Fiesta, where the Spanish olives were as the main role and as to announce the recently ended competition of the winner of winner of the highly successful recipe at the Facebook.

The winner of the practical set-up went out to Ms. Monika Merchant Kövérné, a blog writer who especially targets kids tummy delights especially with her Spanish fish salad. One of the evening’s highlights came by with the sweety specialties. The unique deserts with olive oil, including ice cream and the surprises didn’t end here, the special Spanish jelly desserts prepared by the Spanish chef Mr. Ruben, was out to be tasted by the invited guests.

Qualified and enthusiastic amateurs “gasztro gurus” named the best meals of olives which went through for week-after-week in the field of competition. Ms. Szofia Mautner … Chili and Vanilla, Ms. Eszter Bodrogi … Spice and Spirit, Ms. Dóra Havas … the Purple Figs, Mr. Adam Bálint … Spoon 1 2 3, and Prime. These World Eater bloggers tasted each-and-every “creation” and jointly decided who turns up to be announced at the best taste and formation of the Spanish Olives competition. The first stand went out to Ms. Anna Gorodecka‘s  with her plate of olives in braised wine which was the most spectacular not for just the eyes but the taste was heavenly,said the jury.

It was pretty hard to decided which on looks and taste the best but at the end the final countdown came between two lucky competitors, to picked the Spanish olives on the groves while spending  a week-end in  Andalusian. The announcement was made by the host of the evening, Mr. Szlárd Sági, the gastro maniac. He also announced that this year in the month of October it will the “month of olives” at Budapest’s finest restaurants: La Plaza, Five Garden Pest Pig, Hemingway, California, Divine, Bock, and the TG. Well it seems like the gourmet eaters will surely have doors wide open to enjoy bits-and-pieces of the fine olives from Spain.

Update and snaps Aggie Reiter

Hungarian House of Photography – Mai Manó House

MS. VIVIAN MAIER

“The Street photographer”

Exhibition: September, 20 – November, 25. 2012.

District VI. 20, Nagymező street – Budapest

 +36 1 473 2667

From obscurity, a legend of quality photography was born. The Hungarian House of Photography is proud to present the works of the photography world’s latest sensation, VIVIAN MAIER.

In 2007, an amateur historian John Malo of stumbled upon a box of unmarked and unnamed negatives in a Chicago auction house, and discovered one of the greatest American street photographers of the twentieth century. The legacy of over 2 000 rolls of films, 3 000 prints, and  more than 100 000 negatives, the full extent of which, in fact, Vivian Maier probably never showed  to anyone, has impressed professionals and admirers of photography alike all over the world. With only a few shows in Europe so far and before a grand tour in 2013, a selection of mostly never before displayed 50 fine prints are now exhibited at the Hungarian House of Photography in Budapest, courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, NY. Vivian Maier was essentially unknown throughout her lifetime. She was born in New York in 1926 to a French mother and an Austro-Hungarian father. She traveled extensively between Europe and the U.S. and, in 1956, she ultimately settled in Chicago where she worked as nanny for more than forty years. For a brief period in the 1970s she worked as a nanny to journalist, Phil Donahue’s children. Towards the end of her life, Maier was supported by the children she had cared for in the early 50s. Unbeknownst to them, one of Maier’s storage lockers (containing her massive group of negatives) was auctioned off due to delinquent payments. She passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. 

With no proper training but an eye for detail, composition and a sense for timing and humanitarian sensitivity, she recorded peculiar moments of urban America in the second half of the twentieth century. Her candid shots of mostly black and whites from the 50’s and 60’s include street scenes, portraits of children and couples, as well as abstract compositions of architectural elements. Continuing her craft into the late 1990′s, she left behind a body of work that, while still being archived and categorized, includes a series of homemade documentary films and audio recordings.  Now, with roughly 90% of the archive reconstructed, her work is part of a renaissance of interest in the art of street photography, echoing legends such as Cartier-Bresson, Airbus, or Frank. The selection presented at the Hungarian House of Photography provides a perfect insight into her ouvre by showcasing works of main subjects: children, women and couples, general cityscapes or street photography, and self-portraits.  

The publication Vivian Maier – Street Photographer is available in the Mai Manó Gallery and Bookstore, while the photographs are also for sale.  In 2007, while working on a definitive history of my neighborhood of Portage Park on the Northwest Side of Chicago, I accidentally stumbled upon the photographic cache of Vivian Maier. The chain of events that this discovery set in motion has since turned the world of street photography, as well as my life, upside down. What began as my personal passion has caught the public eye, and I have now spent the last [four] years preserving and archiving Maier’s vast work, which she had kept secret for over fifty years. Vivian Maier was deeply interested in the world around her. Having picked up photography around 1950, she continued to take snapshots into the late 1990s, ultimately leaving behind a body of work comprising over one hundred thousand negatives. Elderly folk congregating in Chicago’s Old Polish Downtown, garishly dressed dowagers, and the urban African American experience were all fair game for Maier’s lens. Additionally Maier’s vision extended to a series of homemade films and audio recordings. Bits of Americana, the demolition of historic landmarks for new development, the unseen lives of the downtrodden and the destitute, as well as series from some of Chicago’s most cherished sites were all subjects to Maier continuously revisited.  Yet, the combination of Maier’s intense privacy and lack of confidence in her own photographic powers nearly resulted in her collection being consigned to oblivion. If not for an probable set of circumstances, Maier’s iconic images would have been scattered across storage lockers stuffed to  the brim with found items, art books, newspaper clippings, home films, and knickknacks. I have always been fond of a quote by Maier from an audio recording she made where we can hear her philosophize about the meaning of life and death: “We have to make room for other people.  It’s a wheel you get on, you go to the end, and someone else has the same opportunity to go to the end, and so on, and somebody else takes their place. There’s nothing new under the sun.”  – John Maloof, Chicago, 2011 

For more information pls. contact: vivien.boronyak@maimano.hu

This herald news is based upon the source from the Mai Mano House.

Updated:  Aggie Reiter