The S.K. Josefsberg Studio is pleased to present an extraordinary group of photographs by André Kertész on view at the gallery from April 16 to May 30, 1998.

Acknowledged to have been central in shaping the photographic style of an entire epoch, André Kertész's influence on the history of photography has been described by J. Paul Getty Museum photography curator, Weston Naef, as "a little like Christopher Columbus, who discovered a new world that, in the end, was named for someone else." The essence of this style is in its power to wrest poetry from the happenstance moment--to turn the quickness of that moment into "the decisive moment." Kertész' incisive, modernist view of the commonplace experience can be seen in the work of Brassaď and Henri Cartier Bresson, as well as legions of imitators, many of whom are not aware of working in a mode which Kertész invented.

Born in Hungary, July 2, 1894, Kertész made his first photographs in 1912. During the First World War he had he took his camera with him, taking candid shots of his comrades in Poland. Wounded in 1916 was hospitalized for nine months. He made his first distortion photograph "Underwater Swimmer" in Esztergom, Hungary, 1917, which he would revisit later on in Paris, in the early 1930's. Kertész moved to Paris in 1925 and began an extremely creative period producing such noted masterpieces as Chez Mondrian, Satiric Dancer, and Mondrian's Pipe and Glasses. Having relocated to New York in 1936, to a cool reception--his distortions of nudes were viewed as pornographic and "too human". Despite the lack of acceptance of his personal style, he continued to create his own work, This period produced such elegaic images as Melancholic Tulip and Washington Square,. Finally in 1964 his work is given the recognition it deserved, with his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. It was after this momentous exhibition that he received countless honors and awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. Kertész died in 1985.

The exhibition at the S.K. Josefsberg Studio will focus on the street photography of André Kertész, from which the school of "decisive moment" photography developed. 

Ah, Kertesz, we all owe him a great deal.
-Henri Cartier-Bresson