From his 12th-floor apartment, the Hungarian photographer captured many of his defining pictures for more than 30 years
he photographer André Kertész chose his New York apartment carefully. Born in Hungary in 1894, Kertész served in the first world war, and lived and worked in Paris until 1936 when, with the Nazi threat spreading across Europe, he and his wife Elizabeth exiled themselves to the States. He brought with him many ideas from friends in the French avant garde who had included Man Ray and Piet Mondrian – in particular a, of the cubist possibilities of light and shade.
The building they chose, at 2 Fifth Avenue, was empty at the time, and partly under construction; Kertész went through every apartment to find the optimum vantage from which to photograph. The flat he chose, on the 12th floor, was where he lived until his death in 1985, aged 91. Some of his defining pictures were taken from its window and from the roofs of neighbouring blocks.
The picture is included in a forthcoming auction of the personal collection of the British photographer Dorothy Bohm, whoaged 98. Bohm had got to know Kertész from visits to New York in the 1970s. This print was a gift to her, and Kertész’s understanding of the possibilities of shadow and texture in unexpected places, inspired some of her own later work.
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