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| Tisza-Szalka, from the portfolio "A Hungarian Memory" |
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| Distortion #79 |
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Fork Paris
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| Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom |
Andre Kertesz was a Hungarian photographer. Although he lived during World War and upheavals throughout Europe, Kertesz’s work showed little about politics. His work always came from his personal life. He famously remarked, “I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.” Wruter Alstair Smart wrote that Kertesz was a so-called “decisive moment” photography. While taking photos, he waited for the subject found him, and the subject complete photograph. Creating satisfying photos, he knew what he wants. The way he took good photos was not to see but to feel and caught the movement. He captured his moving subjects as they shifting into his frame. For Kertesz, he was the dream, and he gave the dream. He was like a director to manage the subject and the composition to create an atmosphere and content to make the dream come true. His photographs are full of the power to make people happier. Subject matters in photography, but the process of many steps and decision are necessary as well.
Kertesz took photos in many places, in his grandparents’ farm, Paris, and New York. In Paris, Kertesz worked as a photojournalist and connected himself to the Dada movement. Paris was his favorite subject, and many of his favorable photos were taken in Paris. During this period, he captured his subjects without interference but played with composition. His images were not only documentary, but also with an aesthetic perspective. As the increase of persecution of Jews, he moved to New York, where become the center of artistic creation replaced Paris and Berlin filled with Surrealism and Constructive. In New York, his work spread. He explored the outside spaces, such as parks, window ledges, and balconies. After his wife died in 1977, Kertesz was increased reclusive and relied on using a telephoto lens to peer out the world. During this period, some interesting and abstracted cityscapes were created from his apartment near Washington Square.
In addition to the spontaneous shots, “Distortions” was another his most famous series. He used mirrors to stretched and warped nude models so that their “floating, elongated shoulders, heads, and arms” were ghoulish and created a sense of unreality. His unusual angles brought a surreal effect.
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| Circus, Budapest, from the portfolio "A Hungarian Memory" |
In his abstraction work, Distortions, Kertesz “offered an occasion to see beyond images with the mind’s eye and memory’s lens”. In Rexer, the author wrote that “Yet a photograph’s qualities cannot be reduced or referred wholly to its subject, to the prior things and situation it frames. It is also the result of a process, involving many steps and decisions… Each step in this progress toward an image, and even more obviously toward a physical photographic object, removes it from ‘direct’ depiction and solicits photographer with an invitation to intervene…” That is how Kertesz did during his process of taking photos. Being an experimenter, a controller, and an intervener, he does not only rely on his subjects, but he also arranged them in a pleasing composition and made decisions to capture the moving moment. In addition, he created an emotional connection to the subjects and conveyed thoughts to viewers. Kertesz had a strong empathy for his subject without bias. It is necessary to know about the history of photography. Some of Kertesz’s street photography showed his voyeur and his subjects’ voyeur, (such as
Circus, Budapest) and today, we see voyeur is happening everywhere in the street. Something changed over time, and something keeps the same as the past. Furthermore, the emotional bond in photos would not be influenced whenever the photo was created, and whenever the photo would be seen. These are why subject matters, as well as the process of steps and decisions.
Reference
https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2014/august/05/the-melancholy-life-of-the-amazing-andre-kertesz/
http://www.artnet.com/artists/andré-kertész/3
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