The exhibition André Kertész, Walking into the Image, at Stimultania Strasbourg is postponed; here is a first glimpse.
“André Kertész (1894-1985) is one of the eyes that opened new paths in twentieth century photography. Inspired amateur at 18, craftsman of optical research for the New Vision at 28, pioneer of media issues in reporting at 36, he has largely contributed to the aesthetic and professional evolutions of the medium.
If several generations of photographers have been marked by his approach and his images it is because he is the one who, without effect or display, has demonstrated the possibility of pursuing serene works throughout a photographer’s life, away from currents and on the margins of assignments, giving free rein to a strolling eye.
As early as 1959, Henri Cartier-Bresson, at the height of his fame, declared that all photographers were indebted to Kertész. In 1973, John Szarkowski, curator of MoMA in New York, estimated that: “More perhaps than any other photographer, André Kertész understood the particular aesthetics of the portable device and made it manifest”, and many historians have since recognized in him the “father of 24×36 mm photography”.
See André Kertész (1894-1985), the photographer most appreciated by photographers, through the sequences of shots revealed by his negatives, accompanying the wandering of his lens in the streets of Paris in the 1930s, observe how his eye fits the ergonomics of his Leica and fits into the optical field of the world, find his hesitations, appreciate his patience, share his joy of being able to walk in the image while letting bodies and faces enter the frame of his viewfinder, grasp the intuitions of his gaze at the time of the release, understand his restraint towards the decisive moment and finally perceive the precaution with which he entrusts to film the attention that relatives or strangers give him.
At the end of his life, Kertész took care to make all of his images accessible through the donation to France of his negatives. However, no research has come to distinguish the shots that, between 1930 and 1936, mark the beginnings of his practice of Leica, an innovative device with which he initiated photographic wanderings which renewed his intelligence of shooting. A meticulous study carried out on the original negatives kept by the Mediatheque of architecture and heritage made it possible to reconstruct for the first time the chronological continuity of the images that the photographer took between 1930 and 1936 with his Leica. Fruit of this research, the exhibition, presented at Stimultania from April 3 to July 26, 2020 offers to go back to this time of shooting and to observe the steps of Kertész with those he photographed.
Curator: Cédric de Veigy.
Stimultania Strasbourg
33 rue Kageneck
67000 Strasbourg
