André Kertész

André Kertész (1894–1985) was a Hungarian-born photographer whose intuitive and lyrical approach to imagemaking revolutionized 20th-century photography, blending elements of modernism, street photography, and photojournalism through innovative compositions and the pioneering use of the 35mm Leica camera.

Born Andor Kertész on July 2, 1894, in Budapest to middle-class Jewish parents, he grew up in a culturally rich environment, with his father working as a bookseller and stockbroker and his mother selling coffee. After graduating from the Academy of Commerce in Budapest in 1912, he purchased his first camera that same year and began experimenting with photography as an amateur while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange. His early passion was interrupted by World War I, during which he served in the Austro-Hungarian army starting in 1914, fighting on the Polish and Russian fronts before being wounded in 1915 and convalescing in Budapest and Esztergom. It was during this period that he created one of his earliest notable works, Underwater Swimmer (1917), capturing distorted forms that foreshadowed his later experimental style.

André Kertész, born Andor Kertész on July 2, 1894, in Budapest, Hungary, grew up in a middle-class Jewish family as the second of three sons. His father, Lipót Kertész, worked as a bookseller and stockbroker, while his mother, Ernesztin Hoffmann, managed a coffee bar; the family enjoyed relative stability until Lipót's death from tuberculosis in 1909, after which they relocated to the countryside home of Kertész's uncle near the Danube River. As a child, Kertész spent time in the rural village of Szigetbecse with relatives, where he developed an early fascination with visual imagery, particularly the woodcut illustrations in illustrated magazines like Die Gartenlaube.