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Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids | 
| Author: Andre Kertesz
Creator: Robert Gurbo
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $21.32
You Save: $13.68 (39%)
New (31) Used (8) Collectible (2) from $17.06
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 171071
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 6.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0393065642
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.092
EAN: 9780393065640
ASIN: 0393065642
Publication Date: November 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
A powerful collection of the luminous last work by one of the true giants of twentieth-century photography.
After the death of his wife, Andre Kertesz consoled himself by taking up a new camera, the Polaroid SX70. As with earlier equipment, he mastered the camera and produced a provocative body of work that both honored his wife and lifted him out of depression.
Here Kertesz dips into his reserves one last time, tapping new people, ideas, and tools to generate a whole new body of work through which he transforms from a broken man into a youthful artist. Taken in his apartment just north of New York City's Washington Square, many of these photographs were shot either from his window or in the windowsill. We see a fertile mind at work, combining personal objects into striking still lifes set against cityscape backgrounds, reflected and transformed in glass surfaces. Almost entirely unpublished work, these photographs are a testament to the genius of the photographer's eye as manifested in the simple Polaroid. 80 color photographs.
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| Customer Reviews:
Polaroid ... who knew May 19, 2008
Kertesz was a brilliant photographer and this book is more evidence of his abilities. The photographs are taken with a polaroid camera. And they are amazing! Who knew you could convey such emotion with a polaroid and get it to do such amazing things with light and color. Some photos are polaroids of subjects he shot with his other cameras and you can see in other works. But the study of the statues are truly beautiful. If you collect Kertesz - this is a must buy.
A fine pick for any library strong in photographer history. March 4, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Published in conjunction with gallery shows across the U.S. is ANDRE KERTESZ: THE POLAROIDS, which considers the photographer's final works - some 80 colored Polaroid's capturing his unique use of light. Kertesz pioneered photojournalistic techniques: his inspirations produced a revolutionary body of work and their representation here makes this a fine pick for any library strong in photographer history.
Poetic Genius November 27, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Andre Kertesz (1894 - 1985) captured his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. A member of the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI, Kertesz photographed his experiences of the war until he was wounded in battle in 1915. Unfortunately, many of the images he captured during this time were lost during the Hungarian Revolution of 1918.
Thereafter, this preturnatually gifted poetic soul traveled to Paris (in 1925), where he worked as a freelance photographer and published three books of his images; and on to New York (in 1936), where one of the 20th Century's most gifted photographers was effectively cold-shouldered by the photographic "establishment" and relegated to taking pictures of architecture and home interiors for House and Garden. In what must be one of the most egregious oversights in photographic history, not a single one of his images was selected for Steichen's famous The Family of Man exhibition in 1956! It was only after Kertesz retired from commercial work (in 1962) that he was again able to devote his considerable powers of observation and feeling to the same "simple" everyday subjects of his "amateurish" youth. Kertesz left behind a legacy of beautiful, meloncholic tonal poems for all future generations of aspiring photographers to marvel at; and to marvel at the breadth and depth of his feeling for the human condition.
As the short publisher's note above describes, Kertesz was despondent after his wife's death. But his beautiful soul awakened anew after Graham Nash (member of the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) gave him a Polaroid SX-70 camera. Kertesz trained his poetic eye mostly on things in his apartment (and a special little abstract acrylic scuplture whose form reminded him of his departed wife); but, oh the wonders his delicate imagery reveals about himself and his world. And through his wondrous art, we see a little more of the world we think we know, but experience mostly at a distance, without the magic that only a poet with a camera can reveal.
Where a photographer like Minor White (whom I hold in great esteem) deliberately used essentially unrecognizable abstract forms to communicate inner states, Kertesz instead used immediately recognizable shapes and symbols to convey the nature - and feeling - of his connection (or, more often than not, dis-connection) to the world around him. The fragile interconnected bond between artist and humanity was the real "subject" of Kertesz's poetic gaze; and we can all feel it, as we look upon the shapes and tones of his otherwise "ordinary" subjects. His work is less about the traditional subjects of photographs (people, places and things), and more - much more - about his feelings about his relationships with the traditional subjects that came within view of this gentle artistic soul.
This is a beautiful little book that anyone who is interested in fine-art photopgraphy (in the truest sense of the word) would undoubtedly treasure.
"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." - Andre Kertesz.
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