Ata Kandó

Ata Kandó (born Etelka Görög; 17 September 1913 – 14 September 2017) was a Hungarian-born Dutch photographer.

Etelka Görög was born on 17 September 1913 to a family of Hungarian Jewish descent in Budapest to Margit (née Beke) and Imre Görög.

Her father was a high school teacher and translator of Russian literature.

He had been a prisoner of war in Russia during the First World War.

Her mother translated Scandinavian literature into Hungarian and spoke five languages.

Etelka's maternal grandfather (Hungarian style: Beke Manó), was a noted mathematician.

When she learned to talk, Etelka was unable to pronounce her own name and called herself Ata, which she continued to use into adulthood.

Her parents encouraged their daughter in pursuing an artistic profession.

She liked drawing and was enrolled in the Sándor Bortnyik private academy.

Other students included the artists Victor Vasarely (Vásárhelyi Győző) and Gyula Kandó (Kandó Gyula).

Beginning her photography practice in the 1930s with children's photography, Kandó later worked as a fashion photographer, photographed refugees and travelled to the Amazon to photograph landscapes and indigenous people.

She and Gyula wed in 1931 and moved to Paris, but, due to financial difficulties, the couple returned to Budapest in 1935.

Changing her studies to photography, Kandó began studying with Klára Wachter and Mariann Reismann and then completed an apprenticeship with Ferenc Haár.

She completed her exams studying under.

Kandó and her husband returned to Paris in 1938 and she opened a photography studio between the Louvre and the Palais Garnier with Ferenc Haár's wife.

Primarily focusing on children's photography, the business began growing, but in 1940 the German invasion of Paris forced the couple's deportation and return to Hungary.

In 1941, Kandó had a son, Tamás, and two years later gave birth to twin daughters, Júlia and Magdolna.

Her parents and sister were forced into hiding due to their Jewish heritage, however, as Kandó's husband was not Jewish and the Aryan Spouse Act of Hungary gave her a measure of protection, Kandó was able to move about freely.

Both she and her husband worked for the resistance during World War II, housing fourteen Jews in their home.

In another case, Kandó gave her identity papers to Bíró Gábor (Gábor Bíró), a pregnant Jewish woman, so that she could enter a Christian maternity hospital to have her baby.

After the birth, Kandó pretended the child was her own and provided forged identity papers so that the woman could act as a wet nurse for her own child.

Moving multiple times, the Kandó–Bíró household managed to remain undetected until the war ended.

In 1947, the family returned to Paris and Kandó resumed her photography career with a camera she received from Robert Capa after her own was lost.

Unable to find work in Paris, her husband returned to Hungary in 1949 to seek work so the family could join him, but in late 1949 the Iron Curtain's establishment meant that the family was unable to reunite.

Shortly thereafter, Kandó and her husband separated and she fell in love with a 25-year-old Dutch photographer, Ed Van Der Elsken.

Capa also hired her to work at Magnum Photos laboratory where she remained until 1952.

The couple lived together for four years before marrying in 1954 and moving to the Netherlands.

Less than a year later, however, they divorced and she found herself alone in a foreign country with three children.

Turning to fashion photography, she took pictures for well-known Dutch and French fashion houses and travelled with her children making photo shoots throughout the Alps.

In 1956, Kandó traveled to the Austrian–Hungarian border during the Hungarian Revolution.

She wanted to take pictures of the refugees but could not convince any other photographers to go with her.

When the Bound Arts Federation (Gebonden Kunsten Federatie (GKf)) supported the trip and De Bezige Bij agreed to publish the works, Violette Cornelius joined her.

The two women flew to Vienna and took photographs of refugee children, stipulating that the proceeds of the sale go to assist the refugees.

The untitled book was called The Red Book due to its colour, was shot over three weeks so that it could be released by Christmas.

Sales raised over a quarter of a million dollars.

The following year, Kandó published a book called Droom in het woud (Dream in the forest), which featured the holiday trips she had taken in Switzerland and Austria with her children.

Her son, Tamás, who was fourteen, wrote the texts to accompany the dream-like images.

In 1959, she won a silver medal in Munich for fashion photography and then in 1991, received the ; this was followed in 1998 with the Imre Nagy Prize and that same year, she and her husband received the Righteous Among the Nations, awarded by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

Both Kandó and her husband were honored with the Righteous Among the Nations from the State of Israel for assisting Jews during the Holocaust in 1998.

In 1999 she was awarded the Hungarian Photographers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.