Andre Kertesz (1894-1985)

André Kertész was born in Hungary, in1894. He bought his first camera while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. After years of snapshot photography, he moved to Paris in 1925 and began a career as a self-employed photographer. There, he took to the streets, observing and developing his close approach to image making. He also met and began to photograph other artists, including Brassaï and Chagall, and members of the Dada Movement. One of them dubbed him "Brother Seeing Eye", an allusion to a medieval monastery where all the monks were blind except one.

From 1933 to 1936, Kertész published three books of his own photographs. Immigrating to the United States in 1936 with his wife to escape the increasing tension in Europe leading up to World War II, he settled in New York, where he earned his living photographing architecture and interiors for magazines such as House and Garden.

However, his personal photographic style did not mesh well with the straightforward fashion photography the American public expected. He continued to exhibit his individual work as best he could but his reputation slowly faded, and he became disillusioned.

Kertész then had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964 which relaunched his career and reputation. He caught the mood of the times and became somewhat of an elder statesman to the photographers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the mid-1970s he was presenting his work in galleries all over the world. He continued working very efficiently, and was experimenting with instant Polaroid photography shortly before he died in New York.

--In this picture there are people walking through a tight allyway, in a dirty, sooty city. Behind them there is a tall bridge with a train on it, beyond the train there is empty space. 

--I really liked this one because its shows the buisiness of the city with the people and the train, but farther in the backround it seems the city abruptly stops, putting an end to the hysteria. 

--there is an eagle's veiw of a park? with people skattered around it. There is a huge, curved arch of a building at the top of the picture and its shadow is casted down on the people below. It has an almost cristalized look to it. 

--I thought the shadows on the ground of this one were very cool. They remind me of a great clock, like the one in London. 

--A picture through a high, windwo at the city. There is a hole, cracking the glass. 

--This one was just cool. I don't know how he got that window so cleen; it doesn't even look like a window...if it is through a window that is...

--A still life of a flower in a glass, the flower is drooped all the way over till it is almost touching the ground. It is full of shadows and very dark where the light isn't hitting it. 

--I would imagin this picture is very symbolic of something. dieing probably. 

--Two pairs of old, round, glasses lying on a table next to a Mondrian's pipe. the table is light witht the dark lines of the glasses and the edge of the table form a funky frame the pipe in the center. 

--These glasses remind me of colonial times, and Ben Franklen. I like the abrupt edge in the backround.