THE PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK OF ANDRE KERTESZ IN FRANCE, 1925-1936: A CRITICAL ESSAY AND CATALOGUE (HUNGARY, PHOTOJOURNALISM, ART, SURREALISM, CONSTRUCTIVISM)

The dissertation comprises two separate volumes; the first is a critical essay, the second is a catalogue raisonne of all photographs known to the author of this period.;Kertesz develops his own mature idiom, grounded in his Hungar- ian origins, responsive to Constructivism and aware of Surrealism. Kertesz met Michel Seuphor in 1926, and through him Mondrian, and the photographs of Mondrian's environment are sensitive, highly personal responses to abstract geometrical art. He was also familiar with the modernist architects Adolf Loos and Andre Lurcat. Kertesz's first exhibition (1927) was in a Constructivist milieu, and he partici- pated in many important German photographic shows until the advent of Hitler.;In 1928 his work was shown in the proto-Surrealist Salon de l'Escalier, and he developed friendships with Pierre Mac Orlan, author of the first book on Atget and who would later write a preface for Kertesz's own book of Paris photographs in 1934. At this time he also was close to Brassai and marginally friendly with Man Ray. In the late twenties he published work in Surrealist-related magazines such as Bifur and Varietes, even in Minotaure in the thirties.;During the thirties most of his efforts went into reportage work for magazines from which he derived his income. Thus he played an important part in the development of this form during its first great period. He also concentrated on exhibiting and publishing his work as art at this time. Kertesz was therefore a contributor to the brief but important recognition of art photography that culminated in 1936 in Paris with the International Exhibition of Contemporary Photography.;The critical essay concentrates on the photographer's middle period, an extension of his cultural origins in Hungary, where his interest in photography and vernacular and folk arts was nurtured by the art, literature and music of the period (including Bartok indirectly) and the activities of journalism, which popularized these ideas and published photography extensively. When Kertesz came to Paris in 1925, he surrounded himself with Hungarian friends who would continue these interests but his contact with Western Euro- pean modernism made his photography richer and more diversified.