Book Review

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With a Hungarian expatriate about to win the French elections – not hard when you are running against an idiot who never read Economics 101, meaning an opponent whose cure for unemployment is to create half a million new government jobs – it seems appropriate to focus today’s journal entry on a Parisian expatriate photographer who also happened to be Hungarian, none other than the great André Kertesz. Kertesz at least had the good sense to leave Paris before the forces of evil took over, a similar sitiuation to that prevailing today in the world’s most gorgeous city. The difference this time is that a more insular America is not about to bail out a country cursed with the muddle headed socialism of fifty years of the Fifth Republic. Like the worthless doorman in my New York apartment of days yore, the only thing most French workers seem good at is walking around, hand outstretched, palm upwards.

The Paris of Kertész’s day was a better place.

This large format 302 page book, available from Amazon, is not cheap but as, to my amazement, I had no definitive Kertesz monograph in my library, I paid up the not inconsiderable price of entry and have to say it was worth every penny.

The book has its frustrations – the difficulty of finding the right illustrations to match the text, the sheer pig headed idiocy of reproducing miniscule prints of his early work sorrounded by acres of white – are the two worst. However, the narrative, broken into the three main periods of Kertesz’s life, is priceless, something you will rarely encounter in any art book. Special note has to be made of Sarah Greenough’s writing in her two essays which address his formative years in Hungary (1894-1925), and the key years in Paris (1925-1936). Erudite, deeply researched and incredibly informative yet never condescending, it’s art writing at its very best.

Anyone growing up with black and white photography – which means largely people my age and older – cannot have but been affected by Kertesz’s work. His unusual compositions, original points of view and tightness of framing all make for compelling imagery.

Kertész by Pindelski, South Bank, London, 1973. Leica M3, 50mm Elmar, TriX

I cannot count the number of my early images I made by looking up or down at severe angles – Kertész’s influence at work.

A key book for any photographer’s collection.