André Kertész | A Great Photographer Who Has Influenced Cartier-Bresson

André Kertész is a Hungarian-born American photographer, and is among the leading innovators in modern photography. A seminal photojournalist and pioneer of the photo essay, he influenced so many photographers including those most famous ones like Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith, and made a major contribution to lyrical street photography. He was shaped by Constructivism and Surrealism, but his own style was an entirely personal blend of emotion and observation.

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

Kertész’s exploration of photography commenced in 1912, when he began taking pictures of peasants and gypsies in and around Budapest.  He joined the army and took photographs of military life on the front lines. But it wasn’t until he moved to Paris, in 1925, that he found fame. It was here that he purchased his first Leica, the new hand-held 35mm camera, and this inspired his interest in the idea of the chance encounter, something which would be so important for Cartier-Bresson.

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

Kertész left Paris for New York in 1936 because of the threat of WWII, where he struggled to re-establish his reputation, even though he worked for respected magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar. His earliest surviving photographs, often of the people, animals, and rural landscapes of his native Hungary, reflect his lifelong interest in using the camera to capture and create stories.

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

© André Kertész

André Kertész (1894-1985)

After he moved to New York, despite his frustration, he again found stories, capturing some of his most famous images in his new home.Kertész traveled widely in the 1970s and 1980s, and in 1985 another retrospective, ‘André Kertész: Of Paris and New York’, was staged at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.