E. Csorba Csilla: A kamera poétája. Adré Kertész-fotó a Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum gyűjteményeiből (Budapest, 2019)
E. Csorba Csilla: A kamera poétája. André Kertész fotói a Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum gyűjteményeiben / Csilla E. Csorba: The Poet of the Camera Photographs by André Kertész in the Collections of the Petőfi Literary Museum
Years in Hungary André Kertész was 25 when Endre Ady died in 1919. He had already finished his studies at school, which he pursued with little ambition, and after his secondary school final exams he took up a post at the Budapest Stock and Commodity Exchange. In 1912, he received his first ICA box camera shooting 4.5x6 cm negatives, with which he experimented much in the company of his younger brother, Jenő. According to the diary he wrote at the time, his everyday activities included poetry, he himself writing poems. He read journals and went to the theatre. The names of prose writers rather than poets were mentioned among his reading experiences: Mikszáth, Gárdonyi, Bródy, Karinthy, Kosztolányi, Ferenc Herczeg, and others.6 "Poesy”, the word often used at the time, appears in his diary of 1912: "What pictures I could make! All would be full of poesy.”7 At the age of 15 he lost his father who had been involved in selling books and had a large library. His influence must have remained decisive later on, too. As so many in his age group, when he was 18, he was unsure of what career to choose. He pondered whether to become an art critic: "I am not able to review a play yet, but to my greatest pleasure I have been recently able to express my view about objects of art and other solid works of art, albeit to a certain extent only roughly, being unable to penetrate them more deeply. I cannot find the words, although I have them inside.”8 While he searched for words in his longing for poetry he discovered a way of expression, his own language with which he could communicate the best - photography. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Andor Kertész joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a volunteer and took his camera - the one he received from his brother, which was faster and able to shoot pictures both in sunlight and in shade - with him. He fought on the Polish and Russian fronts, contracted typhoid fever and was seriously wounded in 1915. His shots, which still represent lasting value, were made of his fellow soldiers playing the cello and the accordion, and writing letters in the peaceful intervals of war, of people behind the front line and the everyday life of small towns. A refined, lyrical, intimate approach characterise his portrayal of people. 23
