André Kertész Presentation by Robert Gurbo
On April 3, 2014, Robert Gurbo gave a presentation about André Kertész to the Photography in Chicago Now classes at Columbia College Chicago. Gurbo discussed his own role as curator of the André Kertész estate as well as how he worked up to the position. Gurbo had received a book of Kertész’s work as a teenager and developed an affinity for the photographer’s work. He first met Kertész in 1978 while working on a project in New York City. From there, the two became friends and Gurbo made slides for Kertész’s lectures and built cabinets for his negatives. By the time Kertész passed away in 1985, Gurbo was organizing negatives and essentially running Kertész’s archive.
Kertész’s archive is comprised of about 1,300 self portraits. This body of work is about his journey in context of his life. Kertész was born in raised in Budapest, Hungary where the arts were encouraged and thought of highly. In school, he and his classmates were taught through interactions with artists of different mediums. When he graduated, his mother gave him his first camera—a handheld, glass plate camera that made prints that were about 1 x 1.5 inches. He took mostly self-portraits and, in a time before self-timers, he had a machinist install a device on his camera that would act as a self-timer. In his self-portraits, he watches the photo as it’s being taken; many times this means he is looking at the other subjects in the frame.
In his adult life, Kertész moved to Paris and, by 1927, was the most sought after photojournalist there. In fact, he was so revered that journalists would have him take photographs before they determined the story they would write about the pieces. Later, Kertész and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to New York City to avoid the precursors of WWII. As he tried to find work in New York, he came to realize that with increased availability of cameras, the industry had changed. The case was now that Kertész’s work was too sentimental for editorial work. Alexander Liberman, a designer at Conde Nast Publications, provided him with work shooting architecture and interiors. While this type of work wasn’t ideal for Kertész, it was how he supported himself over the next seventeen years. Kertész made about 6,000 photographs through this opportunity.
Kertész’s overall body of work is both personal and nostalgic. His soft photographs tell stories of finding himself through his art. Ultimately, he became a master of composition and especially of timing. Kertész used his film wisely; it was rare that he would have trial and error shots on his contact sheets. He continued to make photographs throughout his life and, even in his last years, was featured in various exhibits.
Kertész’s “Raison d’Entre” body of work—originally part of The Concerned Photographer exhibit at Riverside Museum in 1967—is currently on display in Chicago’s Stephen Daiter Gallery (located at 230 West Superior Street, Fourth Floor). The exhibit runs through May 24, 2014.
