by Gerald Boerner
“Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“My talent lies in the fact that I cannot touch a camera without expressing myself.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“The most valuable things in a life are a man’s memories. And they are priceless.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d’être. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d’être, which lives on in itself.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“Technique isn’t important. Technique is in the blood. Events and mood are more important than good light and the happening is what is important.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“I do what I feel, that’s all, I am an ordinary photographer working for his own pleasure. That’s all I’ve ever done.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me, Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
“I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
André Kertész (1894 – 1985)
André Kertész, born Kertész Andor, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and by his efforts in establishing and developing the photo essay. In the early years of his lengthy career, his then-unorthodox camera angles, and his unwillingness to compromise his personal photographic style, prevented his work from gaining wider recognition. Even towards the end of his life, Kertész did not feel he had gained the worldwide recognition he deserved. He is recognized today as one of the seminal figures of photojournalism, if not photography as a whole.
André Kertész bought his first camera and made his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. After years of amateur snapshot photography in his native Hungary, he moved to Paris in 1925 and began a career as a freelance photographer. There the young transplant, speaking little French, took to the streets, wandering, observing, and developing his intimate approach to image making. He also met and began to photograph other artists, including Brassaï.
From 1933 to 1936 Kertész published three books of his own photographs. Immigrating to the United States in 1936, he settled in New York, where he earned his living photographing architecture and interiors for magazines such as House and Garden. It was not until he retired from commercial work at age sixty-eight that Kertész was free to focus again on the more personal subjects that had delighted him as an amateur.
His Beginnings…
Expected by his family to work as a stock broker, Kertész was a photographic autodidact and his early work was mostly published in magazines. This continued until much later in his life when he stopped accepting commissions. He served briefly in World War I and moved to Paris in 1925, against the wishes of his family. There he was involved in the artistic melting pot of immigrants and the Dada movement, and achieved critical and commercial success.
“If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
The imminent threat of World War II pushed him to emigrate again to the United States, where he had a more difficult life and needed to rebuild his reputation through commissioned work. He took offense with several editors, who he felt did not recognize his work. In the 1940s and 1950s he stopped working for magazines and began to achieve greater international success. Despite the numerous awards he collected over the years, he still felt unrecognized, a sentiment which did not change even at the time of his death.
His career is generally divided into four periods based on where his work was most prominent at these times. They are called the Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and, towards the end of his life, the International period.
Hungarian period…
Kertész bought his first camera (an ICA box camera) in 1912, as soon as he had earned enough money, despite his family’s protests to continue his career in business. In his free time away from work, he began taking photographs of the local peasants, gypsies, and landscape of the surrounding Hungarian Plains (the puszta). His first photograph is believed to be "Sleeping Boy, Budapest, 1912", although his photographs were not published until 1917, during World War I, while he was a member of the Austro-Hungarian army; they were first published in the magazine Érdekes Újság. Kertész taught himself how to use a camera, and even 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 light-weight camera (a Goerz Tenax), perfect for carrying around during combat. Unfortunately, most of these photographs were destroyed during the Hungarian Revolution of 1919. He was wounded in 1915 by a bullet, and his right arm was temporarily paralyzed.
French period…
Kertész emigrated to Paris in September 1925 against his mother’s wishes, leaving her behind along with both his brothers, his wife and his uncle Lipót, who died shortly thereafter. Jenő also left Hungary to live in Argentina, but Elizabeth remained until her future husband was well established in Paris and they could live together. Kertész became one of the many Hungarian born artists who had left the Austro-Hungarian Empire for another country, such as François Kollar, Robert Capa, Emeric Fehér and Brassaï, and was certainly not the only artist emigrating to Paris; Man Ray, Germaine Krull (who also took part in exhibitions with Kertész) and Lucien Aigner all emigrated there during this period.
In Paris he found critical and commercial success with magazine publications after doing commissioned work for several magazines across Europe from Germany to France to Italy to Great Britain. Kertész was the first photographer to have a one-man exhibition when Jan Slivinsky organised to have 30 of his photographs presented in 1927 at the gallery Sacre du Printemps Gallery. Over the next years, Kertész would appear in many solo exhibitions and shows with other artists. In one show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, the price of Kertész’s proofs was set at US$20, a large sum of money during the Great Depression of America.
Kertész was published in French magazines such as Vu and Art et Médecine, in which he made numerous covers. His greatest journalistic collaboration was with the French editor and publisher of Vu, Lucien Vogel, who ran his photographs without explanatory prose and let him report on various subjects. Kertész enjoyed travelling in and around Paris taking photographs on the varied subject Vogel set for him to capture. Kertész was commissioned to create one of his most famous series of works, the "Distortion" photographs, in 1933: a series of about 200 photographs of two nude, female models in various poses with their reflections in a combination of distortion mirrors, similar to those found in a carnival’s house of mirrors. In some cases the models, Najinskaya Verackhatz and Nadia Kasine, were so distorted that only certain limbs or features were visible in the mirror’s reflection. Some of the images appeared in the 2 March issue of the so-called "girly magazine" Le Sourire and later in the 15 September 1933 issue of Arts et métiers graphiques. Kertész published the book Distortions later that year containing the photographs.
“The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
After his first book of photographs Enfants in 1933, which was dedicated to Elizabeth and his mother, who had died earlier that year, what followed was a series of other book publications. His next book, Paris, was published in 1934 and dedicated to his brothers Imre and Jenő. Nos Amies les bêtes ("Our Friends the Animals") was released in 1936 and Les Cathédrales du vin ("The Cathedrals of Wine") in 1937.
American period…
Kertész arrived in New York with his wife on 15 October 1936, intent on rekindling his inspiration and finding fame as a photographer in America. He and his wife lived out of the Beaux Arts Hotel in Greenwich Village. From his arrival, Kertész found life in America harder than he had imagined and thus started what he would refer to later in his life as the "absolute tragedy". He was now deprived of his French artist friends and the people in America did not respond as kindly as in Paris when their picture was being taken. Soon after his arrival, Kertész approached Beaumont Newhall, the Museum of Modern Art’s photographic department director, who was readying a show entitled Photography 1839–1937. But when Kertész offered Newhall some of his Distortions photographs to display, Newhall criticized them, which offended Kertész, who never forgave him.
Despite this, Newhall took the photographs and displayed them; Kertész went on to star in his own solo December 1937 exhibition at the PM Gallery. The final nail in the coffin for Kertész was when the Keystone agency, who had offered him offsite work which would take him to various locations for his photojournalism, instead made him spend the entirety of his work day in the company’s studio. Kertész tried to return to France to visit, but had no money, and when he had saved enough, World War II had broken out, making travel to France nearly impossible. His struggles with English only compounded his problems. He had coped with his inability to speak French while in France, but in New York, where he already felt like an outsider, the language barrier was debilitating.
In the 25 October 1938 issue of Look, the magazine finally printed a series of photographs called A Fireman Goes to School; but credited them to Ernie Prince, Kertész’s former boss. Infuriated, Kertész considered never working with illustrated magazines ever again. He did however appear in the magazine Coronet in 1937, but was snubbed in 1939 when the magazine published a special issue containing a selection of Coronet’s "Most memorable photographs", none of which were his. He later severed all ties to the magazine and its editor Arnold Gingrich. This was repeated in the June 1941 issue of Vogue, which was dedicated to photography in honour of Condé Montrose Nast, head of Condé Nast Publishing.
Despite having contributed to more than 30 commissioned photo essays and articles in both Vogue and House and Garden, Kertész was omitted from the list of photographers. In the same year, since he and Elizabeth carried Hungarian passports, Kertész was designated an enemy alien due to World War II and was not permitted to photograph outside or anything to do with national security, and was later fingerprinted. Not wanting to be arrested or get in trouble with the police because Elizabeth had started a cosmetics company (Cosmia Laboratories) with a Hungarian friend, Kertész ceased to do commissioned work and disappeared from all photographic work for three years.
Later life…
In 1946, Kertész was again placed in a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, which was composed mainly of photographs from his Day of Paris series. Kertész often referred to this as one of his greatest moments in America. Afterward however, it was not until 1962 that his photographs were in a public display again, when they were shown at Long Island University. During this dormant period spent working for House and Garden he was insulted once again when his work did not appear in Edward Steichen’s famous The Family of Man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. Thus towards the end of 1961, he broke his contract to Condé Nast Publishing after a minor dispute.
“A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it is marked. For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my canon. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record truthfully.”
— André Kertész, Photographer and Photojournalist
Kertész, now feeling liberated from the confines of the magazine, thrust himself back into the international photographic scene. This later period of his life is often referred to as the "International period", where he was able to gain worldwide recognition and held many exhibitions in many countries. He appeared in an exhibition at the IV Mostra Biennale Internazionale della Fotografia in Venice in 1963 after his 1962 exhibition and later appeared that same year at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The gold medal he was awarded in Venice for his dedication to the photographic industry gave him a feeling of recognition he had never felt whilst working for House and Garden. He later visited Argentina to see his brother Jenő.
Despite his successes, Kertész still felt unrecognised as a photographer. His last years were spent travelling to various locations around the globe for his exhibitions, especially Japan, and rekindling friendships with other artists. Elizabeth died in 1977 from cancer and was cremated. To cope with the loss, Kertész fell back on his new network of friends, often visiting them at night to talk. By this time, he was said to have learned basic English and often talked in what his friends called "Kertészian", a strange mixture of Hungarian, English and French. In 1979, the Polaroid Corporation gifted him with one of their new SX-70, which he experimented with into the 1980s. Still growing in fame,
Kertész was granted the National Grand Prize of Photography in Paris in 1982, as well as the 21st Annual George Washington Award from the American Hungarian Foundation the same year. His dealer, Susan Harder, was especially active in compelling others to recognize his contributions to the history of photography. To add to the numerous awards collected over his career, Kertész was later given an honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art in 1983; the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in Paris in 1983, which was presented along with an apartment for future visits to Paris; the Maine Photographic Workshop’s first Annual Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984; the Californian Distinguished Career in Photography Award in 1985; first Annual Master of Photography Award that same year, presented by the International Center of Photography; as well as an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Parson’s School of Design of the New School for Social Research. To add to the overwhelming amount of appreciation shown by the various institutions across the globe, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased 100 prints from him in 1984, the largest ever acquisition of photographs from a living artist by a museum.
Critical evaluation…
Throughout most of his career Kertész was depicted as the "unknown soldier" who worked behind the scenes of photography, yet was rarely cited for his work, even into his death in the 1980s. Kertész thought himself unrecognized throughout his life, despite spending his life in the eternal search for acceptance and fame. Though Kertész received numerous awards for photography, he never felt both his style and work was accepted by critics and art audiences alike. Although, in 1927, he was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition, Kertész said that it was not until his 1946 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, that he first felt he received positive reviews on his work, and often cites this show as one of his finest moments in America.
During his stay in America, he was cited as being an intimate artist, bringing the viewer into his work, even when the picture was that of subjects such as the intimidating New York City and even his reproduced work printed after his death received good reviews; "Kertesz was above all a consistently fine photographer". Kertész’s work itself is often described as predominantly utilising light and even Kertész himself said that "I write with light". He was never considered to "comment" on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life. With his art’s intimate feeling and nostalgic tone, Kertész’s images alluded to a sense of timelessness which was inevitably only recognised after his death.
Unlike other photographers, Kertész’s work gave an insight into his life, showing a chronological order of where he spent his time; for example, many of his French photographs were from cafés where he spent the majority of his time waiting for artistic inspiration. Although Kertész rarely received bad reviews, it was the lack of them which lead to the photographer feeling distant from recognition. Now however, he is often considered to be the father of photojournalism. Even other photographers cite Kertész and his photographs as being inspirational; Henri Cartier-Bresson once said of him in the early 1930s, "We all owe him a great deal".
Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:
André Kertész that can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Kert%C3%A9sz
Also, an article on André Kertész found in:
Peter Stepan. (2008) 50 Photographers You Should Know. New York: Prestel.
Virtual exhibition of paintings by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn on view in five Southern California museums.
