Trafficking in Photographs: Representational Power and the Case of Lajos Kossuth, Budapest 1894

This article examines the tensions related to the memory of revolutionary loss and the increasing resistance to imperial rule that emerged with the death and funeral of the internationally recognized exiled leader of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, Lajos Kossuth, in April 1894. Taking place during the preparations for Budapest's highly anticipated 1896 Millennial Exhibition, Kossuth's funeral became a controversial and highly publicized event once the Austro-Hungarian monarch strictly prohibited the Hungarian government and parliament from taking any official notice of Kossuth's death. The plethora of photographic images of Kossuth and his funeral that circulated at this time allowed the specter of revolutionary loss and reassessments of the 1867 Compromise between Austria and Hungary to reemerge in the public and private spheres of Budapest. The ideas of death and proliferation associated with the photographic medium are critical to this understanding, and are punctuated through a close examination of how Kossuth was represented and "re-presented" in life and in death.