André Kertész
André Kertész was born on July 2nd, 1894 and died on September 28th 1985, He was born Kertész Andor andwas a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style prevented his work from gaining wider recognition. Kertész never felt that he had gained the worldwide recognition he deserved. Today he is considered one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.
Expected by his family to work as a stockbroker, Kertész pursued photography independently as an autodidact, and his early work was published primarily in magazines, a major market in those years. This continued until much later in his life, when Kertész stopped accepting commissions. He served briefly in World War I and moved to Paris in 1925, then the artistic capital of the world, against the wishes of his family. In Paris he worked for France's first illustrated magazine called VU. Involved with many young immigrant artists and the Dada movement, he achieved critical and commercial success.
Because of the German persecution of the Jews and the threat of World War II, Kertész decided to emigrate to the United States in 1936, where he had to rebuild his reputation through commissioned work. In the 1940's and 1950's, he stopped working for magazines and began to achieve greater international success. His career is generally divided into four periods, based on where he was working and his work was most prominently known. They are called the Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and, toward the end of his life, the International period.
Perhaps more than any other photographer, Andre Kertesz discovered and demonstrated the special aesthetic of the small camera. These beautiful little machines seemed at first hardly serious enough for the typical professional, with his straightforward and factual approach to the subject. Most of those who did use small cameras tried to make them do what the big camera did better; deliberate, analytical description.
Early Life and Education
Andor Kertész was born in Budapest to the middle-class Jewish family of Lipót Kertész, a bookseller, and his wife, Ernesztin Hoffmann. Andor, known as "Bandi" to his friends, was the middle child of three sons, including Imre and Jenő. When Lipót died in 1908 from tuberculosis, the widowed Ernesztin was without a source of income to support their three children.
Ernesztin's brother, Lipót Hoffmann, provided for the family and acted much like a father to the boys. The family soon moved to Hoffman's country property in Szigetbecse. Kertész grew up in a leisurely pace of life and pastoral setting that would shape his later career path.
Hoffman paid for his middle nephew's business classes at the Academy of Commerce until his 1912 graduation, and arranged his hiring by the stock exchange soon after. Unlike his older brother Imre, who worked at the exchange in Budapest for all his life, Kertész had little interest in the field. He was drawn to illustrated magazines and to activities like fishing and swimming in the Danube River near his uncle's property.
Kertész's first encounters with magazine photography inspired him to learn photography. He was also influenced by certain paintings by Lajos Tihanyi and Gyula Zilzer, as well as by poetry.
Hungarian Period
After earning enough money, Kertész quickly bought his first camera (an ICA box camera) in 1912, despite his family's protests to continue his career in business. In his free time, he photographed the local peasants, gypsies, and landscape of the surrounding Hungarian Plains (the puszta). His first photograph is believed to be Sleeping Boy, Budapest, 1912.[4] His photographs were first published in 1917 in the magazine Érdekes Újság, during World War I, while Kertész was serving in the Austro-Hungarian army. As early as 1914 (for example, Eugene, 1914), his distinctive and mature style was already evident.
In 1914, at the age of 20, he was sent to the frontline, where he took photographs of life in the trenches with a lightweight camera (a Goerz Tenax). Most of these photographs were destroyed during the violence of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919. Wounded in 1915 by a bullet, Kertész suffered temporary paralysis of his left arm.
He was sent for convalescence to a military hospital in Budapest, but was later transferred to Esztergom, where he continued to take photographs. These included a self-portraitfor a competition in the magazine Borsszem Jankó. His most famous piece of this period was Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom, 1917, the only surviving work of a series of a swimmer whose image is distorted by the water. Kertész explored the subject more thoroughly in his series of "Distortions" photographs during the early 1930's.
Kertész did not heal soon enough to return to combat, and with peace in 1918, he returned to the stock exchange. There he met his future wife Erzsebet Salomon (later changed to Elizabeth Saly), who also worked at the exchange. He began to pursue her romantically. During this period of work and throughout his whole career, he used Elizabeth as a model for his photographs. Kertész also took numerous photographs of his brother Jenő. Kertész left his career at the exchange to try agricultural work and beekeeping during the early 1920's. This venture was brief given the political turmoil that accompanied the revolution and coming of communism.
After returning to the stock exchange, Kertész decided to emigrate, to study at one of France's photographic schools. His mother dissuaded him, and he did not emigrate for several years. Working during the day at the exchange, he pursued photography the rest of the time.
In 1923, the Hungarian Amateur Photographer's Association selected one of his photographs for its silver award, on the condition that he print it by the bromoil process. Kertész disliked this, so turned down the medal. Instead, he was given a diploma from the association. On its 26th,1925, the Hungarian news magazine Érdekes Újság used one of his photographs for its cover, giving him widespread publicity. By that time, Kertész was determined to photograph the sights in Paris and join its artistic culture.
French Period
Kertész emigrated to Paris in September 1925, leaving behind his mother, his unofficial fiancée Elizabeth, both brothers, and his uncle Hoffman, who died shortly afterward.[3] Jenő later emigrated to Argentina. Elizabeth Kertész remained until her future husband was well enough established in Paris that they could marry. Kertész was among numerous Hungarian artists who emigrated during these decades, including François Kollar, Robert Capa, Emeric Fehér, Brassaï, and Julia Bathory. Man Ray, Germaine Krull and Lucien Aigner also emigrated to Paris during this period.
Initially Kertész took on commissioned work for several European magazines, gaining publication of his work in Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain. Soon after arriving in Paris, Kertész changed his first name to André, which he kept for the rest of his life. In Paris he found critical and commercial success. In 1927 Kertész was the first photographer to have a one-man exhibition; Jan Slivinsky presented 30 of his photographs at the "Sacre du Printemps Gallery".Kertész had become connected with members of the growing Dada movement. Paul Dermée dubbed him "Brother Seer" and "Brother Seeing Eye" during his first solo exhibit, alluding to a medieval monastery where all the monks were blind bar one. Over the next years, Kertész was featured in both solo exhibits and group shows. In 1932 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, the price of Kertész's proofs was set at US$20 ($ 359 in 2018), a large sum of money during the Great Depression.
In 1933 Kertész was commissioned for the series, Distortion,about 200 photographs of Najinskaya Verackhatz and Nadia Kasine, two models portrayed nude and in various poses, with their reflections caught in a combination of distortion mirrors, similar to a carnival's house of mirrors. In some photographs, only certain limbs or features were visible in the reflection. Some images also appeared in the 2 March issue of the "girly magazine" Le Sourire and in the 15 September 1933 issue of Arts et métiers graphiques. Later that year, Kertész published the book Distortions,a collection of the work.
Marriage and Family
In the late 1920's, Kertész secretly married a French portrait photographer by the name of Rosza Klein (she used the name Rogi André). The marriage was short-lived and he never spoke about it.
In 1930, he ventured back to Hungary to visit his family. After his return to Paris, Elizabeth followed him in 1931, despite opposition by her family. Elizabeth and André remained together for the rest of their lives. Despite his mother's dying in early 1933, Kertész married Elizabeth on June 17th, 1933. He was said to have spent less time with his artist friends in favor of his new wife.
In 1936 they emigrated to New York, where within a decade, they became naturalized citizens. After creating and running a successful cosmetic business for years, in 1977 Elizabeth died of cancer.
Later Life
In 1946, Kertész had a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, featuring photographs from his Day of Paris series. Kertész said this was one of his greatest times in the United States. In 1952, he and his wife moved to a 12th-floor apartment near Washington Square Park, the setting for some of his best photographs since having immigrated to the U.S. Using a telephoto lens, he took a series of snow-covered Washington Square, showing numerous silhouettes and tracks. In 1955 he was insulted to have his work excluded when Edward Steichen's The Family of Man show was featured at MoMA. Despite the success of the Chicago show, Kertész did not gain another exhibit until 1962, when his photographs were shown at Long Island University.
Kertesz had never been much interested in deliberate, analytical description; since he had begun photographing in 1912 he had sought the revolution of the elliptical view, the unexpected detail, the ephemeral moment - not the epic but the lyric truth. When the first 35mm camera - the Leica - was marketed in 1925, it seemed to Kertesz that it had been designed for his own eye.
Like his fellow Hungarian Moholy-Nagy, he loved the play between pattern and deep space; the picture plane of his photographs is like a visual trampoline, taut and resilient. In the picture opposite half of the lines converge toward a vanishing point in deep space; the other half knit the image together in a pattern as shallow as a spider web, in which the pedestrian dangles like a fly.
In addition to this splendid and original quality of formal invention, there is in the work of Kertesz another quality less easily analyzed, but surely no less important. It is a sense of the sweetness of life, a free and childlike pleasure in the beauty of the world and the preciousness of sight.
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Photography by André Kertész
