André Kertész, Nicolas Ducrot [Editor], Hilton Kramer [introduction]: DISTORTIONS. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. First edition. Quarto. Full gray cloth titled in gilt. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Unpaginated. 120 gravure reproductions. Dust jacket lightly chipped at both spine and joint ends. Archival tape repair to spine verso. Jacket rear panel creased and rumpled. Book with red inkstamp to lower textblock edge that also touches the adjacent binding cloth. First several leaves lightly creased. A very good copy in a good dust jacket.
8.75 x 11.25 hardcover book with 120 gravure reproductions. Art historian Øivind Storm Bjerke noted in a 2010 exhibition catalogue that while the photographer never joined the Surrealists, “it is natural to see his ‘Distortions’ in line with the movement.” Instead of using mirrors to reflect their subjects, Kertész used them to create a sense of unreality.
“In 1932 (according to jacket copy, 1933 according to other sources) Kertész was asked by the publisher Querelle to contribute nude photographs to the mens' magazine Le Sourire (The Smile). Since the war he had been interested in the optical distortions created by water or the chromium-plate housings of auto lamps. For this project he used three mirrors and a camera designed to expose 9-by-12-centimeter negatives fitted with an early zoom lens.
“Sometimes, just by a half-a-step left or right, all the shapes and forms have changed. I viewed the changes and stopped whenever I liked the combination of distorted body shapes," Kertész recalled. They created a sensation in Paris when they were first shown, influencing Man Ray, Brassai, and others. Four years later, they created a furor when they were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. When this book was published, they had not been seen, complete, for over 40 years. In their subversion of the logical language of the image, they are exemplary works of Surrealism.” — Jacket copy and Getty Museum
“Shadows, surprise, and a hint of the sinister define André Kertész’s oeuvre. The Hungarian photographer filled his frames with dark humor and the eerie geometries of everyday life. His 1926 picture of a reclining dancer finds a visual rhyme in the twist of its subject’s legs and a torquing white sculpture beside her. In his famous shot of a fork, taken two years later, the long shadow cast by the silverware evokes a sense of foreboding. Looking at Carrefour Blois (1930), taken a few stories above a sparsely populated cobblestone street, the famous scene in the film The Third Man (1949) comes to mind: Orson Welles’s character gazes upon carnival-goers from a ferris wheel, asking, “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”
“Examining these pictures, it’s clear their creator favored visual flourish over social engagement. Though Kertész lived through both World Wars and significant upheavals throughout Europe, politics played little role in his photographs. Privileging lyricism and distortion over reality, he aligned himself with the Dada movement and created artful photographs that are still imbued with haunting power.
“Kertész, who was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1894, bought his first camera with his earnings as a stock exchange clerk. He had little time to develop his craft before he was drafted by the Austro-Hungarian in 1914, but Kertész opted to turn war into art. Instead of capturing conflict, however, he turned his lens on soldiers off the battlefield.
“After World War I ended, Kertész settled back into his former life in Budapest. In 1925, he moved to Paris, where his career as an artist finally began to take shape. While he photographed the streets and interiors of a city still repairing its battle wounds, his black-and-white shots focused on the intimate and voyeuristic: a spiral staircase, a far-off building seen through a clock face, a group of picnickers seen from behind trees.
“His Paris is a dream—his dream, of course, but also the dream of many another young stranger from a foreign land, to whom Paris is the longed for home of the heart,” Gene Thornton wrote in a 1976 New York Times article. A 1928 exhibition situated Kertész’s work alongside that of Man Ray, associating him with a major Dada figure. Kertész was immersed in his cultural milieu; he photographed major creative personalities of his day, including novelist Colette, painters Piet Mondrian and Marie Laurencin, designer Jean Lurçat and sculptor Alexander Calder.
“Wielding a handheld Leica camera, Kertész captured his moving subjects as they shifted into his frame. In Meudon, France (1928), a black train juts halfway across the top of the photograph while, in the foreground, a man in a black hat appears directly in line with one of the bridge pillars supporting the locomotive. Three black-clad men walk behind him, while a woman and her child create a sense of symmetry from the other side. If Kertész had snapped his shutter a moment later, this perfect setup—and the picture itself—would have been ruined. As writer Alastair Smart wrote in 2009, “Kertész was perhaps the finest, early exponent of this so-called ‘decisive moment’ photography”—more than two decades before Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the term.
“In addition to these spontaneous shots, Kertész also began one of his most famous series, “Distortions,” in 1933. With the assistance of three mirrors, the photographer stretched and warped nude models—their floating, elongated shoulders, heads, and arms make the figures particularly ghoulish. Art historian Øivind Storm Bjerke noted in a 2010 exhibition catalogue that while the photographer never joined the Surrealists, “it is natural to see his ‘Distortions’ in line with the movement.” Instead of using mirrors to reflect their subjects, Kertész used them to create a sense of unreality.
“In 1936, Kertész moved to New York with his new wife Elizabeth Saly (he was previously married to Hungarian artist Rozsa Klein), and signed a contract with photo agency Keystone Studios, leading to photo commissions from American publications. The couple only meant to stay for two years, but with World War II looming in Europe, their move became permanent
“In New York, Kertész captured looming buildings and urban isolation. A dreamy melancholy pervades The Lost Cloud, New York (1937), which features a single cloud floating past a rising, foreboding city tower; the composition is simultaneously wistful and unreal, more psychological than documentary. In 1949, Condé Nast hired Kertész to shoot design and architecture, including celebrity homes. His most famous series, and his most significant struggles, were already behind him. Yet in 1964, when the Museum of Modern Art curator John Szarkowski devoted a solo exhibition to his work, Kertész’s influence started to reach beyond the European photographers—Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Capa—who already counted him as an inspiration.
“Kertész renounced his commercial work in the 1960s, spending the rest of his life rediscovering his artistic autonomy and the joys of his craft. Szarkowski wrote of these late compositions: “In their economy and ease, in their abandonment to the uncomplicated pleasure of seeing, they are the work of a master.” When Kertész died in 1985, finally recognized for his achievements, he left behind 100,000 negatives, many of which remain undeveloped—a final bit of mystery, enhancing the photographer’s legacy of hazy strangeness.“ — Alina Cohen
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