Negative film canisters of Margit Dorboyni

“A photo please!” This is how Margit Dobronyi with her Hungarian accent would address everyone. Between 1960 and 2000 she photographed countless bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, charity functions, and Purim parties, usually without being hired to do so. She turned up during summer vacations and ski holidays in Semmering. Afterwards came the prints for approval, including payment slips. Her pictures reveal the irrepressible will of Viennese Jews to make up for the life they had missed and to forget the terror they had escaped. They also reflect the pride of the immigrants at having made something of themselves in their new city. Margit Dobronyi, born in 1913 in a rabbinical family, survived the Shoah in Budapest ghetto. After the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 she fled with her children to Vienna and bought a camera – an impressive achievement for a self-taught single mother.