damental loyalty to documentary photography that
Kerte ́sz developed early on would remain with him
throughout his career.
In 1914, Kerte ́sz was recruited by the Austro-
Hungarian army to fight in the First World War,
and his camera accompanied him on the front lines.
Two years later, while recovering from wounds in
an army hospital, he took some of his first ‘‘distor-
tion’’ photographs of soldiers swimming in the
hospital pool. Unfortunately, most of the negatives
from the war were later destroyed during the Hun-
garian Revolution.
Following his tenure as a soldier, Kerte ́sz returned
to Budapest and resumed his job at the stock ex-
change, but photography came to occupy more of
his time. In 1917, his photographs began to be pub-
lished in such Budapest publications as Erdekes
Ujsa ́g (Interesting News)and the satirical magazine
Borsszem Janko ́. It was around this time that he met
Elizabeth Saly, a coworker at the stock exchange,
who began appearing in his pictures in 1919. A stud-
ent of art and dance, she would eventually become
his lifelong partner.
Kerte ́sz can be characterized by a certain stub-
bornness in his working method, which led to cer-
tain difficulties in his career. He was denied a silver
medal in a 1924 exhibition sponsored by the Hun-
garian Amateur Photographers’ Association. He
was punished for refusing to conform to salon con-
ventions, insisting on submitting silver prints rather
than the traditional bromoil prints. Shortly there-
after his efforts were validated whenErdekes Ujsa ́g
published one of his war-era night photographs on
the cover—his first cover photograph.
While Kerte ́sz accumulated photographic suc-
cesses, the political circumstances in Budapest
became distinctively uninviting under Admiral Hor-
thy’s anti-Western, anti-Semitic nationalist policies.
Such a repressive climate, compounded with Ker-
te ́sz’s artistic goals, provided plenty of impetus for a
decisive move to Paris in 1925, whereupon Andor
became Andre ́for good.
Kerte ́sz’s immigration was aided by a press card,
and he immediately launched his career as a free-
lance photojournalist, taking pictures for a variety
of French, German, British, and Italian publica-
tions. He lived in Montparnasse, a thriving locale
for artists and bohemians, and established himself
amongst the community of Hungarian expatriate
artists whose social headquarters was the Cafe ́du
Doˆme. He became casually acquainted with the few
other eminent photographers in Paris, Germaine
Krull, Berenice Abbott, and Man Ray. He also be-
friended such luminaries as poet Michel Seuphor,
painter Piet Mondrian, and his fellow countryman
Brassaı ̈, who was then working as a journalist and
would credit Kerte ́sz for inspiring his own interest
in photography. Kerte ́sz paid a momentous visit to
Mondrian’s studio in 1926, during which he took
portraits of the artist and still lifes of various items
in the apartment. A photograph from this visit
depicts Mondrian’s glasses and pipe on a table
and plays on the abstract geometry for which their
owner was so renowned.
Kerte ́sz brought something of his Hungarian aes-
thetic to his Paris photographs—a lighthearted,
sometimes satirical approach to capturing moments
in the daily lives of Parisians. Though he occasionally
experimented with cropping, he did not frequently
manipulate his negatives otherwise. He found the
city to be a rich enough subject matter to warrant
straight observation. However, his occasionally dis-
orienting framing and interest in abstract forms
hinted at his association with the avant-garde. He
generally favored oblique angles over frontal views
and often utilized high viewpoints, creating images at
times suggestive of La ́szlo ́ Moholy-Nagy’s highly
experimental ‘‘new vision’’ photography or Alexandr
Rodchenko’s Constructivism.
The Sacre du Printemps Gallery hosted Kerte ́sz’s
first solo exhibition in March 1927. The exhibition
connected Kerte ́sz’s work to ‘‘l’esprit nouveau,’’ the
term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire nine years
earlier in his call for a postwar formalistic ‘‘return
to order,’’ and later adopted by Le Corbusier and
Ame ́de ́e Ozenfant’s Purism movement. Michel Seu-
phor and the poet Paul Derme ́e were responsible for
reviving the term, and chose Kerte ́sz as their princi-
pal photographer when they published a magazine
calledDocuments internationaux de l’esprit nouveau
in April 1927, a platform for their interest in
abstraction and the International Style. Kerte ́sz’s
contributions to thePremier Salon Inde ́pendant de
la Photographiein 1928 revealed his penchant for
aestheticizing everyday objects and his interest in
abstract formalism. Such tendencies are demon-
strated by his picture of a fork resting against the
curve of a plate, a composition distinguished by its
play of line and shadow. Yet his work never reduces
its subjects to total abstraction. There is a certain
sensitivity to his approach, as well as a loyalty to his
subjects and their connotations.
An artistic breakthrough of sorts occurred in
1928 when Kerte ́sz purchased his first Leica cam-
era. The ease of portability of the recently devel-
oped instrument suited Kerte ́sz’s aesthetic and
fostered spontaneity and experimentation in his
work. His interest in capturing chance encoun-
ters—or ‘‘the decisive moment’’ that would become
the trademark of Henri Cartier-Bresson—is demo-KERTE ́SZ, ANDRE ́