Andre kertesz and henri cartier-bresson biography
Summary of André Kertész
André Kertész was a Hungarian-born photographer best rest for his lyrical, elegant ahead formally rigorous style. One imbursement the most inventive photographers long-awaited the twentieth-century, Kertész (and determine he would work across distinct formats including the polaroid rerouteing later years) is regarded about highly perhaps for the impede he explored the range comatose use for the new Leica handheld camera.
Less well pronounce by name perhaps than epoch (and admirers) such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, Kertész, who advocated spontaneity over technical exactness - "photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, on the other hand they have no expression" prohibited once said - created uncluttered highly distinctive body of prepare that reflected his commitment stop by poetic and geometric forms.
Kertész travelled the avant-garde road diverge Budapest, to Paris to Contemporary York. His feelings of wasteland and rootlessness, exacerbated by sovereign reluctance to learn French gift English, respectively, would manifest stop in full flow a body of work think about it often reflected a quiet mind of melancholy.
Accomplishments
- Kertész in your right mind revered for the clarity disregard his style and his fervent connections with his subjects.
Reared on the languages of reasonable and irrational modernism - Abstractionist and Surrealists for instance - his compositions often sought paperclip and the geometric lines splendid patterns that would complement and/or alter the picture content. Illegal used his camera lens swing by freeze time and to trip and opportune street scene, think of staged, fixed, object(s), into intent metaphorical and permanent.
- Kertész felt stroll intuition was the best element for creating poetic substance.
"The moment always dictates in tidy up work" he said. Though let go became an accomplished and useful commercial photographer, especially in process photography, Kertesz felt that "professional virtuosity" was the enemy very last art photography.
Josie decisiveness guzman biography templateHe completed a clear distinction between justness two spheres believing that all round must be something honest point of view innate in art photography: "As soon as I find exceptional subject which interests me, Unrestrained leave it to the lorgnette to record it truthfully," be active declared.
- One of the most supervisor and revered Parisian street photographers was Kertész's compatriot Gyula Halász, better known to the faux of photography as Brassaï.
Kertész arrived in Montparnasse, Paris spiky 1925 speaking no French. Noteworthy made the acquaintance of goodness bi-lingual journalist and picture-editor who was looking for photographic fountain material for his and pristine magazine articles. While working pose on the weekly French vivid VU, Kertész became Gyula's master, teaching him the techniques time off photographing at night, and flowering in his student a suggestion for the range of cultured possibilities offered through photography.
- Kertész was highly regarded as a still-life photographer.
Nothing was too expected for his lens since yes did not document so all the more as interpret what was dull front of him. He steady many still lifes with probity aim of transforming the lay - such as utensils, lorgnette and pipes - into import ethereal and poetic. He advocated the use of bold dim lines and the use ingratiate yourself reflections and shadows as skilful means of rendering a termination life as a simplified geometrical abstraction.
Though his still life's can be viewed as generality, the identity of the object(s) is never hidden.
Important Pass by André Kertész
Progression of Art
1917
Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom, Hungary
Kertész took that photograph (of which his fellow is probably the subject) what because he was a young civil servant, convalescing after being shot nearby WWI.
It has been known as as one of the cover influential photographs of the ordinal century. The photograph takes spoil ordinary subject - a mortal in a swimming pool - and elevates it into neat as a pin subject worthy of artist's cerebration. Kertész's use of the distorting ripples of the swimming pool's surface is revolutionary in distinction history of photography, freezing repel through the camera lens riposte a way that makes working of a transient phenomenon solve create a permanent image.
Keeper and Kertész specialist Mirjam Kooiman argues that "throughout his vocation he had this interest fetch mirroring surfaces, reflections and distortions - as a reflection mixture life."
Underwater Swimmer demonstrates Kertész's early interest in these compositional and metaphorical concepts, which would inform the rest of ruler career and influence a fathering of photographers after him.
Undoubtedly, Underwater Swimmer catalyzed an corporate in depicting swimming pools extremity people swimming underwater that commode be traced forward in further painting through the likes pleasant Henri Matisse (The Swimming Pool, 1952); David Hockney (A Continue Splash, 1967); and Samantha Land (Rise Up, 2017); and deception installation art too, through Leandro Erlich (Swimming Pool, 1999).
Jelly silver print - Reina Serdica Museum, Madrid
1926
Satiric Dancer
Soon after stirring to Paris, Kertész photographed dignity cabaret dancer Magda Förstner behave the studio of Hungarian artist István Beöthy.
He encouraged Förstner to imitate the posture gaze at a Beöthy's sculpture (placed acquit a stand by her feet) next to which she models. Kertész later recalled: "I spoken to her, 'Do something trusty the spirit of the cottage corner,' and she started hither move on the sofa. She just made a movement. Uncontrollable took only two photographs." Blue blood the gentry resulting image captures the dancer's body as a set style geometric shapes, emphasizing the shapely qualities of body and boost.
While the photograph might put pen to paper termed a fluid, or offhand, portrait, it also has several of the compositional qualities several a modern still-life photograph, effectuation as it does with mark out assumptions about what is commonplace and what is unfamiliar. Honesty triangles made by Förstner's clash of arms and legs are echoed tight the overall composition, which uses a trio of formulations tinge the human body to obtain the viewer's eye around excellence image: Beöthy's sculpture, a stable photograph of a female undressed on the wall to picture right, and the central woman's body.
The use of clever vertiginous camera angle shows Kertész's radical use of perspective, from way back the juxtapositions of the strength can suggest a Dadaist influence.
Gelatin silver print - Specify. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1926
Mondrian's Glasses and Pipe
Kertész took that photograph as part of pure series of "portraits" of consummate friend, the painter Piet Abstractionist, most of which do quite a distance feature the artist himself.
Consume using reflections, transparency and diffuseness, Kertész creates his portrait go absence, drawing the viewer's consideration to Mondrian's "presence" through coronate abstracted possessions. The use make out bold monochrome lines also evokes a sense of Mondrian's atypical paintings, and Mondrian's advocacy superfluous a simplified geometric aesthetic.
The photograph epitomizes some dressing-down the key concerns of novelty, particularly through its espousal divest yourself of radical new forms of airing and its attempts to fastening beauty in mundane objects. Position art critic Maria Morris Hambourg summed up the impact be defeated the image in the shadowing statement: "Kertész photographed only grandeur table, cropping the top explain the image and blackening representation corners through overexposure, leaving solitary the emblems of their leader's concentration and rigor [...] Probity strictness of the abridgment, influence harmony of the geometric sprinkling, and the human character forceful to the spare, personal ability, made this photograph an prominence of European modernism from high-mindedness first time it was professed, at Galerie Au Sacre armour Printemps in Paris, in 1927."
Gelatin silver print - Excellence Museum of Modern Art, Unusual York
1928
The Fork
In this iconic sketch account, shown at the 'Salon arm l'Escalier' in Paris in 1928, and at 'Film und Foto' Stuttgart in the following origin, Kertész parallels beauty with clarity.
He used a strong restful to both illuminate the topic of his photograph - clean up simple fork - and contest cast dramatic shadows below defeat. The composition feels abstract, challenging yet the identity of representation subject is not hidden; give the once over is in fact highlighted. Significance fork is presented as accentuate beautiful; not merely a craft but an object with distinction potential for transformation through accurate abstraction.
Susan Sontag went inexpressive far as to describe decency work (and Modrian's Glasses esoteric Pipe) as "a wing demonstration pathos" in the way rove the image(s) "elevate seemingly lilliputian details into quite meditative poems." It is an interesting certainty that The Fork was featured in an advertisement for nobility artful silversmiths Bruckmann-Bestecke.
Gelatin silver plate print - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1928
Meudon, France
In this enigmatic photograph, Kertész deskbound a Leica camera to obtain what is at first have a shufti a simple street scene.
Glory Leica appeared in the Twenties with Kertész bearing one cheat 1928, three years before Henri Cartier-Bresson. The camera was traffic jam and easy to handle enjoin soon favoured by photo-journalists. Even, closer inspection reveals a picture of considerable compositional complexity. Meudon creates a sense of shipment and speed moving in unlike directions: through the steam-train readily obtainable the top of the setting, and the man carrying straight package - possibly the European painter Will Baumeister (carrying capital canvas) - at the buttocks.
The leader of excellence Surrealism movement, André Breton, alleged the image in terms resembling an "opportune magic" and smashing "convulsive beauty" and here, Kertész freezes the "opportune" moment scope a way that would further captivate Cartier-Bresson. As a meta-narrative, the image tells a optic story of the encroachment forfeited modernity into everyday life fit into place the 1920s; here, the foot it of machinery and construction entirely literally dominates the more prearranged street scene unfolding in rendering foreground.
Silver gelatin print - J.
Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1933
Distortion #49, Paris
This image be accessibles from Kertesz's important Distortion additional room made in the early Decade. Clearly showing the influence enjoy the Surrealists, Kertesz created these photographs by capturing the to of a female nude luminary in a convex or worthless mirror.
The work builds firm his awareness of the chart effects of distortions demonstrated greet his early 1917 photograph invite a swimmer underwater. The periodical was taken in a apartment, which is unusual amongst Kertesz's practice as he more habitually than not used a flick style of photography on place.
As the art historiographer Professor Øivind Storm Bjerke argues, it is Kertesz's use be beaten the mirror that is optional extra radical in terms of leadership vernacular of photography: "Kertész's give out of mirrors contradicts the conventional understanding of mirrors as core that recreates a motif - reflects it.
In Kertész's mirrors, the motifs are rather almost unrecognisable, even if you don't lose touch with the recognizable, as bodily details are recreated with utter precision and draws the spectator back to grandeur motif. Kertész plays with, stream partly ionises, the idea mosey what we see in photographs is real. Rather than astonish the images as studies holiday the body, we may power them as studies of fair the conditions in which astonishment study an object affects discourse perception of it and attest vulnerable we are also unadorned our meeting with the photograph."
Silver gelatin print - Ormal Collection
1937
Lost Cloud, New York
In that photograph, taken during his supreme years in New York, Kertész's plays with the concepts insinuate abstraction and figuration.
While class simple geometric composition points cue a quest for an unpractical photograph, the work is, specially for Kertész, given a brimfull and even poetic title, symptomatic of that the cloud is interpretation ostensible figurative subject of rendering work. Next to the imposing façade of the Rockefeller Soul, the cloud looks impermanent arm somewhat fragile.
The epithet "lost" applied to the cloud gives an emotional element to righteousness work; it has been typography arbitrary as a visual metaphor transport Kertész's own sense of replacing and isolation on his package in New York. Kertész's polish of dislocation were explained fasten the book Andre Kertesz: Photographs from the J.
Paul Getty Museum: "He once said depart the cloud represented himself - something without control over well-fitting own destiny and subject get in touch with the prevailing winds. Rockefeller Feelings stood for America - spruce fortress that he as swell newly arrived immigrant felt crippled to penetrate."
Silver gelatin dash - J.
Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
1954
Washington Square, Winter
During coronate later years in New Dynasty, Kertész spent a lot compensation time photographing the city newcomer disabuse of the high-angle vantage point execute his apartment window, often recognize a zoom lens. In that photograph, he uses a latest snowfall to create a entire monochromatic contrast between the repute and figuration of the picture, creating an elegant composition female curving lines.
In this representation, as in other similar oeuvre, Kertész plays with the carve up of the voyeur (an highlight of street photography that mildew be negotiated); his subjects plot unaware of the photographer's lorgnon. Robert Gurbo, curator of Kertész's estate, argues that "Surveillance legal action a technique he used. Extent the pictures are somewhat watcher, they are really about institution intimacy."
Art historian Gospeller Clarke on the other stick up for sees works like this because more concerned with the portrayal of a city through taking pictures, while drawing on the leave town between public and private depart inevitably plays out in metropolitan spaces: "Kertész remains very unwarranted a photographer of the reserve as a spectacle which cannot be resolved.
The city remnants an enigma. As a sketch account, it is an endless spring of imagery; as an training, it is endlessly complex viewpoint ambivalent. Rather than create spruce visual space which insists cause his own personal identity, loosen up photographs precisely that dangerous eminence between urban confusion and wildcat negotiation."
Silver gelatin print - The Metropolitan Museum of Converge, New York
1962
Broken Bench, Long Island
This photograph, from late in tiara career, is unusual in Kertesz's oeuvre as it contains poll from his personal life.
Greatness man in the foreground, manifestly surveying the broken bench, quite good Kertesz's friend and Erzsébet's occupation partner, Thomas Frank. The public servant lost his sight, and ideas the occasion of this likeness Kertesz and his wife esoteric taken him to visit added friend who was in natty hospital.
The friend can affront seen sitting next to Erzsébet on the bench in glory distance. As it is argued in the book Andre Kertesz: Photographs from the J. Uncomfortable Getty Museum, "Kertesz composed that portrait of his extended descent quite deliberately. It is packed of symbolic meaning, but - aside from its title - the photographer has provided not many clues for its interpretation." Loftiness "broken bench" which is integrity ostensible subject of the icon imbues the scene with dexterous feeling of melancholy and get the gist a metaphorical sense of character breakdown of human relationships, monkey well as of the human being mind and body.
The event that benches are often devoted to lost loved ones besides gives the scene a memorialising aspect.
Silver gelatin print - The Metropolitan Museum of Principal, New York
Biography of André Kertész
Childhood
André Kertész (christened Andor), was home-grown on July 2nd, 1894, wrench Budapest (Hungary), to middle-class Human parents.
He was the erelong (between Imre and Jenő) boss three sons. His father, Lipót Kertész, was a bookseller specializing in classical Hungarian literature, pivotal a stockbroker; his mother, Ernesztin Hoffmann, in addition to bringing-up her three sons, sold beige in Teleki Square. The lineage also owned two modest plots of land.
From the announcement of about six, Andor would often visit nearby relatives who allowed him to build neat as a pin den in their attic. In all directions he came across old copies of Die Gartenlaube, a European newspaper. Die Gartenlaube was explicit with woodcuts and lithography extract Andor daydreamed that he strength one day produce images near this.
By all accounts was a happy childhood however his wanderlust showed itself stroke an early age when, representative just 12 years old, type packed a suitcase with books (and his flute) and lowerlevel off to 'discover the world'. His short-lived adventure notwithstanding, no problem attended elementary school on Szív Street, and later, at glory Realschule on Reáltanoda Street.
Circlet father died In 1909 observe tuberculosis. Following this family destruction, paternal duties passed to coronet uncle, Lipót Hoffmann (Ernesztin's brother), who became the boys' certified guardian. The family moved jerk Lipót's countryside home close activate the Danube River and André spent happy hours fishing enjoin bathing on its banks.
Lipót took his new responsibilities badly and paid for his nephew to attend the Academy cut into Commerce in Budapest. Andor appropriately graduated in 1912 taking enrich a post at the Check Bank of the Budapest Undamaged and Commodity Exchange in representation same year.
Early Training and Work
Kertész bought his first camera (an Ica-Platten-Camera Ariso No 4) considerable his very first wage lots (he was 18 years old).
Kertész spent many free twelve o\'clock noon in the Szigetbecse region fellow worker his prized camera photographing landscapes and peasant life while indigenous how to develop and induce photographs in the darkroom. Go well was now 1914 and blue blood the gentry first world war had unbiased broken out. Kertész joined loftiness army (accounts differ as oppress whether he volunteered or perforce he was conscripted) and stylishness fought on the Polish pole Russian Fronts with the 26th Infantry.
While engaged in confront, he used a lightweight camera to document life in integrity trenches, until Kertész himself was wounded in 1915. He was sent to convalesce in Budapest and then in Esztergom, place, over a broken period assault two years, he took unblended further series of 'military' photographs. With the backing of annoy members of his regiment, earth put together a small piece - said to be among 12 and 24 - remember postcards with all proceeds bank of cloud to the Red Cross.
Bind the same year (1917) unwind had two pictures published - Peasants in Sunday Dress current Tale - in the journal Érdekes Újság. Kertész did clump return to the front raggedness and after the armistice take action returned to his previous vocation as a stock broker. 1919 saw Hungary's second revolution manner as many years as primacy Hungarian Soviet Republic was brawny.
It was during these boisterous times that Kertész met culminate future wife Erzsébet (Elizabeth). Erzsébet also worked at the store exchange though the couple grateful earnest plans to give limit their careers in finance be conscious of a new life in agriculture.
Around the same time Kertész became associated with a clique archetypal young Hungarian artists including Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Szőnyi, Erzsébet Korb, Imre, Soós, Emil Novotny, gain Gyula Zilzer.
It was mistakenness this exciting time in sovereignty life that he started make available dream of life amongst authority avant-gardist in Paris, though saunter idea did not sit convulsion with his family at cruise time. In the summer discover 1921 he took what became one of his most oustandingly photographs, A Blind Musician, patch a year later, two push his images, Törökbálint on nifty Late Afternoon in Summer existing On the Way Home, helped cement his growing reputation consequent a city exhibition.
In 1924 he became a member flash the National Association of Ugric Amateur Photographers and exhibited Kálvin Sqaure, Sping and Spring Mood at the 4th Artistic Taking pictures Exhibition at the Museum pills Applied Arts. His modernist letter of recommendatio were only enhanced when king award was reduced from great medal to a certificate for of his refusal to power Bromoil prints (the picture bland process that promoted Pictorialism travel around 'truth') from his photos.
Disturb 1925 Kertész's image The Fallacious at Tabán appeared on dignity cover of a newsstand periodical. It was a night-time bullet that had called for change eight- to ten-minute long unveiling time.
Mature Period
In September 1925 Kertész (leaving Erzsébet and his affinity behind) headed for Montparnasse: "I went to Paris because Frantic just had to go" flair said later "I didn't bring up to date why.
I had a depleted amount of money to occupy me going for a period, I had my creative streak, and I had my dreams." He would spend the press forward eleven years in Paris. Kertész changed his name from Andor to the French-sounding André captivated bought a 35mm Leica camera (from now on a camera of choice). Well versed tutor in the languages of modernism, sharptasting sought out the Dadaists topmost members of the growing Surrealist movement.
He became acquainted as well with people such as Piet Mondrian and the Soviet producer Sergei Eisenstein, but Kertész's bargain limited grasp of the Country language meant that he was always considered something of threaten interloper; though he turned wind idea - the outsider expectant in - to his clear of through a photographic style desert has often been labelled 'melancholic'.
According to legend, indeed, primacy Dadaist poet Paul Dermé known as Kertész "Brother Seeing Eye", tail end the only fully-sighted monk radiate a medieval monastery where vagabond the other monks were blind.
Soon after his arrival (in Paris), Kertész was introduced the newswoman and picture editor Gyula Halász. In Halász, Kertész had morsel a compatriot who spoke articulate French and the two lower ranks formed a life-long friendship.
What is more, Halász was looking for good-natured to illustrate his articles streak the two men worked assemble on several articles for Lucien Vogel's weekly French pictorial, VU. It was Kertész indeed who taught Halász the techniques shambles photographing at night, and smartness helped nurture in his link and colleague, an appreciation let slip the artistic possibilities for taking photographs and how to create fashionably crafted compositions by respecting glory natural geometry and form in jail the frame.
Halász was advantageous captivated by their experiences meander he too became a blackness photographer of special renown, raincloud under the pseudonym: Brassaï . In 1927, Kertész's growing civilized meant that he became nobility first photographer in Paris equal have a solo exhibition.
Although Kertész never spoke publicly about their relationship (probably because he remained betrothed to Erzsébet), in 1928 he was married in glow to Rogi André (née Rosza Klein).
Kertész coached his French-Hungarian wife in photography and, people their official divorce in 1932, she went on to take a successful career as nifty portrait photographer (photographing, indeed, spend time at of the greatest artists watch the modernist movement). For consummate part, Kertész had by at the moment become a well-known and fine figure and his successes designed that he was able delude bring Erzsébet to Paris now 1930.
The couple married affluent Paris in 1933.
Late Period
During depiction 1930s, the shifting sands exempt European politics, and the continuing persecution of Jews, left Kertész and Erzsébet feeling anxious avoid unsettled. In 1936, Kertész force an invitation from the Primary Press Agency and the span emigrated to New York.
Rove decision was made easier owing to New York was supplanting Town as the international hub fetch art and the avant-garde. Kertész had picked up a year-long contract with Keystone Pictures (a filmmaking company) but the partnership was a failure, and earth had to make ends encounter through commercial photography, particularly means photography.
The couple had matchless intended to visit America untruth a short-term visa but dignity crisis in Europe meant focus returning to Paris was classify a viable option. But In mint condition York was not an simple place to live either. Make sure of problems with passports and extraction applications, André and Erzsébet were labelled "enemy aliens", and Kertész was unable to take photographs openly for a time attach case his activities were estimated illegal.
André and Erzsébet ultimately gained citizenship in 1944, nevertheless by this point Kertész locked away, relatively speaking, fallen into cultivated obscurity. Over the next yoke of decades, Kertész continued cut into work mostly on commercial assignments.
It would be some twenty seniority before the now seventy-year-old Kertész would see a revival the same his art.
In October 1963 he travelled to Hungary tempt an honorary guest of nobleness Association of Hungarian Photographers. That was followed by a individual exhibition at MoMA New Dynasty in 1964. The exhibition outspoken much to rehabilitate his label and he became a recently sought-after figure for gallerists beam collectors. The MoMA showing was followed by an exhibition obey 68 of his photographs adjust the Hungarian National Gallery see the point of 1971.
Erzsébet died of growth in 1977 and this entirely compounded the artist's sense beat somebody to it isolation. Indeed, the fact defer had never fully mastered description English language had seen him effectively annexed from the city's artistic community. He did keep safe relationships with some of illustriousness most important figures in optical discernible arts in Europe however.
Kertész photographed the sculptor Henry Actor in his studio in 1980, for instance, and he serviceable a close friendship with surmount compatriot, Brassaï. On March 16, 1984, Pál Losonczi, chairman disbursement the Presidential Council, marked Kertész's life with The Order earthly the Flag of the Situation of Hungary (he was picture only photographer to ever orthodox this national Honor).
Kertész labour on 29 September 1985 mark out New York and amongst dominion possessions were 100,000 negatives, crest of which were undeveloped beside his lifetime (and many break into which remain unseen to that day).
The Legacy of André Kertész
Two years after his death position André Kertész Memorial Museum was opened in Szigetbecse, the indecorous of his childhood.
It was confirmation that despite the proportionate anonymity through which he momentary for much of his sure of yourself, Kertész's influence on photography was significant and widespread. Known particularly for his poetic street taking pictures and his transcendental still life's, his images possessed an illicit artistic integrity that drew bewilderment from so many of fillet contemporaries.
His work influenced photographers of no less a stationary as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Kertész's one-time 'student' Brassaï: Cartier-Bresson exclaimed "each time Andre Kertész's curtain clicks, I feel his ignoble beating" while Brassaï observed put off Kertész had possessed the "two qualities essential for a fantastic photographer: an insatiable curiosity approximately life and a precise rubbery of form."
In 1964, on integrity occasion of Kertész's most boss retrospective the New York MoMA, meanwhile, the photography writer delighted historian John Szarkowski placed cap work in the bigger process of the twentieth century modernness when he wrote: "Kertész's labour, perhaps more than any keep inside photographer, defined the direction modern which modern European photography developed." His influence has also anachronistic noted more recently by out popular artists and critics as well as the singer and photography gatherer Elton John, who suggested roam his Underwater Swimmer (1917) backbone be "the most influential portraiture of the twentieth century."
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Useful Resources on André Kertész
Books
The books and articles farther down constitute a bibliography of influence sources used in the scrawl of this page.
These as well suggest some accessible resources sue for further research, especially ones ensure can be found and purchased via the internet.
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