Andre Kertesz

André Kertész

Andre Kertesz

André Kertész, was born on July 2, 1894 in Hungary into a middle class family. He was 14 years old when his father died. His uncle looked after him after that, and steered him into working at the Budapest stock exchange, a job Kertesz hated. It was his first real job.

Kertész bought his first camera in 1912 and began taking photographs. He took the photographs of the people around him in this period. During the first World War which he joined as a member of the army, he took the photographs of his fellows in the army and their lives in the war medium until his wounding. In 1923, he refused the silver medal offered by the Hungarian Amateur Photographer’s Association. He wanted to turn down the medal for a diploma instead. Kertesz’s life is generally divided into four period and the first one is the Hungarian period in which he was in Hungary and began taking photographs.

Kertész emigrated to Paris in 1925 to work freelance in photography and lived there until 1936. He got in contact the key artists of the period at this place and got in touch with some magazines. In 1927, he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery Au Sacre du Printemps in Paris. In 1928, he bought a Leica camera and continued his works of photography by taking the photographs of everyday life in Paris, roads and the artists around him. These years were the ones in which his artistry was established and his style was clarified.

André Kertész moved to New York in 1936 and took photographs for the magazines like Look, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue for a period. Although he hadn’t planned to stay, he couldn’t leave New York because of the eruption of the second World War. The contract he had drawn up with the publisher expired in 1962. So he found chance to focus his attention on his personal works again. Kertész, who put his signature under important photograps also in this period, died silently in his sleep at his flat 12-J, on the Fifth Avenue, on September 28, 1985.

André Kertész, whose works don’t lose their significance in time and who created his own unique style, is a very important character for photography. Besides, he had his name written among the most important artists of the 20th century. He took photographs in several different kinds and he succeeded in putting his signature of his unique style under his works for all the kinds he worked.

He used shade and dark as well as light masterly. He reflected the plain aesthetics of everyday life in the best way in his photographs with small format cameras he used. He became a guide to photograph artists of his period and later with creative compositions he achieved with details of the common objects. Henri Cartier-Bresson acknowledged for him: “Whatever we have done, Kertész did first.”, as a good example to express the importance of Kertész in photography.