TIBOR BOZI
People who have met Tibor Bozi know that, unlike many of his colleagues, he isn't a wallflower. He simply loves talking. Period. This fact led him to taking up photography in the first place - 'One picture speaks more as thousand words', Tibor says.
Moreover, no one can doubt the Hungarian's sense of humor. And this is despite the fact that Tibor has experienced many things in his life that were anything but funny. His dad wanted him to be an engineer. His studies at the TU in Budapest soon bored the young Tibor pretty quickly. After all, it was people rather than technology that fascinated him.
Hence, he picked up photography as a second course, and to this day Tibor values photographic art more as a 'mode of communication' than anything else. Very early on he connected this passion with yet another interpersonal form of communication - music. To finance his studies in Hungary, Tibor started to shoot artists at international jazz festivals.
In 1977, Tibor left his home country, illegally in a car boot. Soon the magical eye of his camera won out over all other perspectives. He worked as assistant to various different photographers in various locations around the world. Between 1979 and 1984, Tibor worked in cities such as Rome, Barcelona, Caracas and Miami. Eventually he ended up in Munich. And it was there that he came in contact with yet another visual art from - the theatre. Thanks to the Gasteig's cultural director Jochen Zoerner-Erb, he was sent to theatre festivals like Avignon's to take pictures of the great mimes.
As chance would have it, it was a man most people only know wearing a mask that helped Tibor to international acclaim and fame: in 1988 he was sent to shoot Alice Cooper for Germany's reknowned underground music magazine Spex Magazine - without make-up! The pictures were so spectacular, that Tibor was hired on a permanent basis by the magazine and the record labels started taking note of him. Consequently the labels employed Tibor to travel with their artists or sent them to Tibor's photo studio.
Between 1990 and 1994, Tibor photographed lifestyle series for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Harpers Bazaar and moved to New York. A Job for Elle Magazine took Tibor to shoot Portraits of Bob Marley's widow Rita in Jamacia. That is where he met Lynn Goldsmith, a star photographer much admired in the photography scene already then. When Tibor shortly thereafter worked with Spike Lee on his film „Jungle Fever“, Lynn signed the man with his unique photographic style and equally unique Hungarian accent to her agency LGI. This is also the beginning of Tibor's international photography career. Since 1995 LGI was a part of the world's 2. biggest photography agency Corbis.
Since the mid-nineties Tibor is based in Munich again. From there he also works in London, the US and other countries, for international record labels, publishers and advertising agencies. He has worked, among many others, with artists and TV personalities like Beck, Mary J Blige, Dr. Dre, Donald Trump, Guns’n’Roses, Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Juliette Lewis, Björk, Steven Tyler, Spike Lee and many more.
Some of the personalities mentioned above are not exactly known for low-maintenance and easy going behaviour. Tibor's motto, no matter what the artists personal quirk, is clear: " Treat so-called stars respectfully without respect. That yields the best results by far.". During work time, Tibor speaks uncharacteristically little. However he will sometimes tell stories about his shootings afterwards. Whether it is about the cool gangster rapper who's scared of heights, the pop diva with the 'noisy stomach' or the reggae-dudes who are allergic to weed, you can always expect to be thoroughly entertained. Tibor Bozi`s pictures are also at the Hip Hop Hall of Fame in L.A. and was in the founderteam of german hip hop magazine Juice, end of ´90s.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung