On the occasion of the award, a short film was made about the project with a short animation realised by Csaba Klement.

From the catalogue:

"The book is a result of a special and multi-layered cultural undertaking. Its basis, starting point, and source of inspiration are provided by the widely and deservedly recognised Fortepan, the unique private photography archive founded by Miklós Tamási. While the archive is only available online, it is a continually expanding community collection documenting the era preceding digital photography, which is now not only an inexhaustible source but has become an important and unavoidable cultural phenomenon. The album drawing on this material is based on a subjective but conceptual selection by Szabolcs Barakonyi, unusually focusing not on the historical documentary content but on the artistic quality reflected in the images. The 333 photos thus selected reflect a specific cross-section of the Fortepan collection, from which Zalán Péter Salát created a special volume titled Fortepan Masters, which, far exceeding the mere presentation of photographs, is a truly autonomous object of art in its own right. The designer clearly undertook the task to reinvent, expand and enrich the content-based contexts of reception through the visual appearance of the album and create a complex intellectual and sensual experience for the ‘reader’. All of this is achieved through the thoughtful and sophisticated use of a wide range of design graphics and typography tools, a sensitive application of materials as well as the competent and creative use of printing technologies. 

Jury statement:

The 690-page volume published in autumn 2021 was made using the material of the most important Hungarian private photography archive, Fortepan, and contains a selection of 333 photographs. The creator of the project’s concept and its art manager is Szabolcs Barakonyi, while the creative concept of the book design was made by Zalán Péter Salát, its publisher-in-charge is György Simó and its editor was Róza Tekla Szilágyi. The photographs in the album were arranged free from any thematic constraint, with their selection primarily having been decided based on their outstanding aesthetic value: the end result, therefore, is a subjective selection. Fortepan Masters is a contemporary book with an unconventional structure: it has a double-spined body, and instead of pairs of pages it is made up of pages of sheets folded in three, virtually making its browsing into a ritual and inviting the reader to actively participate in the experience. The book’s typography and choice of paper are also extraordinary: the clever selection of historic font set and its twelve variants evoke the 20th century, while the random order of the sheets of paper used for printing lends a unique character to every single copy."