“The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me, Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.” —André Kert ész (1894–1985)
André Kertész was a Hungarian photographer who emerged as one of the most influential practitioners of the medium. His remains best known for his contributions to photojournalism, employing distinctively dynamic compositions throughout his influential photo essays. He notably maintained a palpable empathy for his subjects, setting aside political or social biases regardless of who he was photographing. Born Kertész Andor on July 2, 1894 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, he came from a Jewish middle-class background. Though his family expected him to pursue a career in business, he eventually moved to Paris and fell with its bohemian culture. Throughout the mid-1920s, he met Piet Mondrian, Sergei Eisenstein, and many of the Dadaists. Kertész eventually fled France and its growing Jewish persecutions, and emigrated to the United States where he went on to work for magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and House & Garden, as well as mounting solo shows at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1946 and at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964.