André Kertész’s windows

News
- April 17, 2019

by Claire Debost

Until May 4, the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York showcases the series Window Views by one of photography’s pioneers, André Kertész. From the time he moved to the United States in 1952 until his death in 1985, the Hungarian photographer created contemplative images by photographing the view from his twelfth-floor apartment window in Washington Square.

*A Winter Garden, New York*, 1970 © The André Kertész Estate, courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

Fragments of city life

Kertész’s images are snapshots of city life. Taken from above, they don’t allow us to distinguish any face. The play of perspective and shadow is heightened by black-and-white contrasts. Kertész is a voyeuristic photographer par excellence. It is hard to look at these images today without thinking about their modern legacy: drone and surveillance images. However, Kertész’s work is neither documentary nor visionary; rather the opposite. His photographs are modernist abstractions in which the camera’s frame is paired with the casing of the window. In one of the images, we can see the Twin Towers, a reminder that the series is also a testimony to its time, to the passage of seasons, and to the changing urban landscape.

*Buy Bud (Billboard)*, 1962 © The André Kertész Estate, courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

An emotional frame of mind

The exhibition also includes color Polaroids Kertész took after the death of his wife and which comprise here as if a second part of the series. Amid emotional turmoil, Kertész plunged into experimentation. His Polaroids show less a voyeuristic view of the outside, than an introspective vision formed by an interior reflection of the photographed scenes. We no longer see a view of the building opposite but the window frame, the play of light on the pane, the juxtaposition of objects.

*December 1*, 1979 © The André Kertész Estate, courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

Between isolation and poetry

The entire series conveys a feeling of isolation, an impression that Kertész is an outcast in the city even while trying to understand his adoptive country. Although the camera is aimed outside, the viewer is placed in the privacy of the photographer’s home. Even though Kertész felt out of place in New York, he managed to find a kind of poetry by the window side.