Kertesz on Kertesz (Book Review)
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Andre Kertesz (1894-1985) was a master photographer born in Hungary. After serving in World War One he worked in an accounting office in Budapest until, in 1925, he followed his heart to Paris, the centre of the art world. In Paris, he quickly made friends friends with artists such as “Leger, Chagall, Vlaminck, Mondrian, Delaunay, Giacometti, Lipchitz, Lurcat, Calder and Zadkine”. And when he wasn’t shooting photographs or sleeping in his room… he hung out at Cafe Du Dome, the centre of their social universe. Kertesz described those 11 years in Paris as the best of his life. He had an international reputation and was greatly respected as an artist and photographer.
Kertesz left Paris for New York in 1936 with his wife for one year. However, the war erupted in Europe and he spent the next 30 years being ignored, under-appreciated and mostly shooting photographs to please himself because the American market was not ready for his European style. They called his nude distortions ‘pornography’ and in turn he refused to buckle under on commercial projects. It was not until Kertesz was an old man that America accepted him as a master photographer.
In the book Kertesz on Kertesz: a Self-Portrait, published in 1985, Kertesz walks the reader through his life story in a personal way using photographs and small pieces of text to guide context. It could have as easily been called “A Conversation with Kertesz” because he reminisces about photographs along the journey.
For example, four friends in World War One were photographed on a communal latrine but one of those men was killed soon after. Yet this was the only photograph Kertesz had to hand the man’s wife, and he did just that. She was pleased. On another occasion a simple photograph of a young soldier writing a letter gets the explanation that this soldier was writing about jumping over a brothel wall on Christmas, 1914. The photograph is elevated by the story.
There is a beautiful photograph on page 28 titled “Hungary, 1918″ that is beautifully framed. At first you see the cobbled alleyway and the peasant woman. Then the ladder. Then you see the cat climbing a ladder right at the top left intersection of thirds.
