The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.
biography
Progression of Art
1917
Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom, Hungary
Kertész took this photograph (of which his brother is probably the subject) when he was a young man, convalescing after being shot during WWI. It has been named as one of the most influential photographs of the twentieth century. The photograph takes an ordinary subject - a man in a swimming pool - and elevates it into a subject worthy of artist's contemplation. Kertész's use of the distorting ripples of the swimming pool's surface is revolutionary in the history of photography, freezing time through the camera lens in a way that makes use of a transient phenomenon to create a permanent image. Curator and Kertész specialist Mirjam Kooiman argues that "throughout his career he had this interest for mirroring surfaces, reflections and distortions - as a reflection on life."
Underwater Swimmer demonstrates Kertész's early interest in these compositional and metaphorical concepts, which would inform the rest of his career and influence a generation of photographers after him. Indeed, Underwater Swimmer catalyzed an interest in depicting swimming pools and people swimming underwater that can be traced forward in modern painting through the likes of Henri Matisse (The Swimming Pool, 1952); David Hockney (A Bigger Splash, 1967); and Samantha French (Rise Up, 2017); and in installation art too, through Leandro Erlich (Swimming Pool, 1999).
Gelatin silver print - Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
1926
Satiric Dancer
Soon after moving to Paris, Kertész photographed the cabaret dancer Magda Förstner in the studio of Hungarian sculptor István Beöthy. He encouraged Förstner to imitate the posture of a Beöthy's sculpture (placed on a stand by her feet) next to which she models. Kertész later recalled: "I said to her, 'Do something with the spirit of the studio corner,' and she started to move on the sofa. She just made a movement. I took only two photographs." The resulting image captures the dancer's body as a set of geometric shapes, emphasizing the sculptural qualities of body and movement. While the photograph might be termed a fluid, or unrehearsed, portrait, it also has some of the compositional qualities of a modern still-life photograph, playing as it does with our assumptions about what is familiar and what is unfamiliar. The triangles made by Förstner's arms and legs are echoed in the overall composition, which uses a trio of formulations of the human body to draw the viewer's eye around the image: Beöthy's sculpture, a framed photograph of a female nude on the wall to the right, and the central woman's body. The use of a vertiginous camera angle shows Kertész's radical use of perspective, while the juxtapositions of the composition can suggest a Dadaist influence.
Gelatin silver print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1926
Mondrian's Glasses and Pipe
Kertész took this photograph as part of a series of "portraits" of his friend, the painter Piet Mondrian, most of which do not feature the artist himself. Through using reflections, transparency and shadows, Kertész creates his portrait through absence, drawing the viewer's attention to Mondrian's "presence" through his abstracted possessions. The use of bold monochrome lines also evokes a sense of Mondrian's characteristic paintings, and Mondrian's advocacy for a simplified geometric aesthetic.
The photograph epitomizes some of the key concerns of modernism, particularly through its espousal of radical new forms of expression and its attempts to capture beauty in mundane objects. The art critic Maria Morris Hambourg summed up the impact of the image in the following statement: "Kertész photographed only the table, cropping the top of the image and blackening the corners through overexposure, leaving only the emblems of their leader's concentration and rigor [...] The strictness of the abridgment, the harmony of the geometric elements, and the human character clinging to the spare, personal attributes, made this photograph an icon of European modernism from the first time it was exhibited, at Galerie Au Sacre du Printemps in Paris, in 1927."
Gelatin silver print - Museum of Modern Art, New York
1928
The Fork
In this iconic photograph, shown at the 'Salon de l'Escalier' in Paris in 1928, and at 'Film und Foto' Stuttgart in the following year, Kertész parallels beauty with simplicity. He used a strong light to both illuminate the subject of his photograph - a simple fork - and to cast dramatic shadows below it. The composition feels abstract, and yet the identity of the subject is not hidden; it is in fact highlighted. The fork is presented as something beautiful; not merely a utensil but an object with the potential for transformation through photographic abstraction. Susan Sontag went so far as to describe the work (and Modrian's Glasses and Pipe) as "a wing of pathos" in the way that the image(s) "elevate seemingly trivial details into quite meditative poems." It is an interesting fact that The Fork was featured in an advertisement for the artful silversmiths Bruckmann-Bestecke.
Gelatin silver print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1928
Meudon, France
In this enigmatic photograph, Kertész used a Leica camera to capture what is at first glance a simple street scene. The Leica appeared in the 1920s with Kertész bearing one from 1928, three years before Henri Cartier-Bresson. The camera was light and easy to handle and soon favoured by photo-journalists. However, closer inspection reveals a snapshot of considerable compositional complexity. Meudon creates a sense of movement and speed moving in different directions: through the steam-train at the top of the frame, and the man carrying a package - possibly the German painter Will Baumeister (carrying a canvas) - at the bottom.
The leader of the Surrealism movement, André Breton, described the image in terms of an "opportune magic" and a "convulsive beauty" and here, Kertész freezes the "opportune" moment in a way that would also captivate Cartier-Bresson. As a meta-narrative, the image tells a visual story of the encroachment of modernity into everyday life in the 1920s; here, the march of machinery and construction quite literally dominates the more traditional street scene unfolding in the foreground.
Silver gelatin print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1933
Distortion #49, Paris
This image comes from Kertesz's important Distortion series made in the early 1930s. Clearly showing the influence of the Surrealists, Kertesz created these photographs by capturing the reflections of a female nude figure in a convex or concave mirror. The work builds on his awareness of the visual effects of distortions demonstrated in his early 1917 photograph of a swimmer underwater. The series was taken in a studio, which is unusual amongst Kertesz's practice as he more often than not used a documentary style of photography on location.
As the art historian Professor Øivind Storm Bjerke argues, it is Kertesz's use of the mirror that is particularly radical in terms of the vernacular of photography: "Kertész's use of mirrors contradicts the traditional understanding of mirrors as something that recreates a motif - reflects it. In Kertész's mirrors, the motifs are rather partly unrecognisable, even if you don't lose touch with the recognisable, as bodily details are recreated with utter precision and draws the spectator back to the motif. Kertész plays with, and partly ionises, the idea that what we see in photographs is real. Rather than seeing the images as studies of the body, we may see them as studies of how the conditions in which we study an object affects our perception of it and how vulnerable we are also in our meeting with the photograph."
Silver gelatin print - private collection
1937
Lost Cloud, New York
In this photograph, taken during his first years in New York, Kertész's plays with the concepts of abstraction and figuration. While the simple geometric composition points to a quest for an abstract photograph, the work is, unusually for Kertész, given a full and even poetic title, suggesting that the cloud is the ostensible figurative subject of the work. Next to the monolithic façade of the Rockefeller Center, the cloud looks impermanent and somewhat fragile. The epithet "lost" applied to the cloud gives an emotional element to the work; it has been seen as a visual metaphor for Kertész's own sense of displacement and isolation on his arrival in New York. Kertész's feelings of dislocation were explained in the book Andre Kertesz: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum: "He once said that the cloud represented himself - something without control over its own destiny and subject to the prevailing winds. Rockefeller Center stood for America - a fortress that he as a newly arrived immigrant felt helpless to penetrate."
Silver gelatin print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1954
Washington Square, Winter
During his later years in New York, Kertész spent a lot of time photographing the city from the high-angle vantage point of his apartment window, often with a zoom lens. In this photograph, he uses a recent snowfall to create a stark monochromatic contrast between the ground and figuration of the photograph, creating an elegant composition of curving lines. In this image, as in other similar works, Kertész plays with the role of the voyeur (an element of street photography that must be negotiated); his subjects are unaware of the photographer's lens. Robert Gurbo, curator of Kertész's estate, argues that "Surveillance is a technique he used. While the pictures are somewhat voyeuristic, they are really about observing intimacy."
Art historian Graham Clarke on the other hand sees works like this as more concerned with the representation of a city through photography, while drawing on the tension between public and private that inevitably plays out in urban spaces: "Kertész remains very much a photographer of the city as a spectacle which cannot be resolved. The city remains an enigma. As a photograph, it is an endless source of imagery; as an experience, it is endlessly complex and ambivalent. Rather than create a visual space which insists on his own personal identity, he photographs precisely that dangerous ground between urban confusion and private negotiation."
Silver gelatin print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1962
Broken Bench, Long Island
This photograph, from late in his career, is unusual in Kertesz's oeuvre as it contains figures from his personal life. The man in the foreground, apparently surveying the broken bench, is Kertesz's friend and Erzsébet's business partner, Thomas Frank. The man lost his sight, and on the occasion of this photograph Kertesz and his wife had taken him to visit another friend who was in a hospital. The friend can be seen sitting next to Erzsébet on the bench in the distance. As it is argued in the book Andre Kertesz: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, "Kertesz composed this portrait of his extended family quite deliberately. It is full of symbolic meaning, but - aside from its title - the photographer has provided few clues for its interpretation." The "broken bench" which is the ostensible subject of the photograph imbues the scene with a feeling of melancholy and with a metaphorical sense of the breakdown of human relationships, as well as of the human mind and body. The fact that benches are often dedicated to lost loved ones also gives the scene a memorialising aspect.
Silver gelatin print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Influences and Connections
Influences on Artist
Influenced by Artist
Artists
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![Piet Mondrian]()
Piet Mondrian ![No image available]()
Lajos Tihanyi![No image available]()
Gyula Zilzer
Movements & Ideas
Artists
Movements & Ideas
Useful Resources on André Kertész
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