PORTIUS TITAN – PHOTOGRAPHER Emperor of the Third Eye
COLLAPSE‘Photographer’ is too slim a word to describe Portius Titan. A
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big, fat adjective is needed, a grotesquely swollen word. He has
been called many things: Lord of the Lens; Emperor of the
Third Eye; The Silver Nitrate Silverback; Tightfisted Titan.
Let us make do with Photogod. Like encountering a policeman
when drunk, his work baffles and disturbs us.
How does he manage to capture the precise revelatory
moment... reality with its knickers down? As he explains,
You must slowly peel back the surface layer... slowly...then RIP
IT OFF! Yah, it hurts, it leaves the red skin, but that’s life.
To really understand Portius, one must go back to 18th
century Hungary and the infamous Cheesehall Putsch of
1789, but we haven’t got time for that here. As a young photographer
he was taught by Walter Gropius’s dad. Gropius Sr.
would say, ‘There! Look! LOOK AT IT!’ Amazingly, the
technique worked, and Portius remembers, ‘soon my sight
was as keen as an owl with a telescope, swooping down on
a mouse, snapping it with my Leica, coughing up a fur ball
and selling it for magnificent sums.’
Beyond Photography
‘Photographer’ is too slim a word to describe Portius Titan. A big, fat
adjective is needed, a grotesquely swollen word. He has been called
many things: Lord of the Lens; Emperor of the Third Eye; The Silver
Nitrate Silverback; Tightfisted Titan. Let us make do with Photogod. Like
encountering a policeman when drunk, his work baffles and disturbs us.
How does he manage to capture the precise revelatory moment… reality
with its knickers down? As he explains, ‘You must slowly peel back the
surface layer… slowly… then RIP IT OFF! Yah, it hurts, it leaves the red
skin, but that’s life.’He also confides, ‘When I press the button, I am the loneliest man in the
world.
He lost his eye whilst taking pot shots at pigs in Prague. But
photography is like leering at a pretty girl – you only need one
eye to do it. His work has been exhibited all over the world except
in Britain, which is notorious for ignoring Hungarian geniuses. But
now, the man and his work are brought here by the quasi-legendary
gallery owner Kenny Van De Leermaker. When told of this new
potential market, Portius, uncompromising as ever, said, ‘Art for the
masses? Pah! Art is totalitarian! Despotic! I am a Pol Potographer!’