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
Parisian Hungarians in 1925, and then ten years later in 1934 another photographer who became internationally famous (André) Andor Kertész engages with another artistic version of remembrance. Lajos Tihanyi and György Bölöni, or sculptor József Csáky who tried his hand at translating Ady’s poems, must have introduced Kertész to Ady’s work and cult, adding to what he had already learnt in Hungary. Although in his older age Kertész declared "I was not close to writers”,24 he remained on friendly terms with Márai, the Bölönis and perhaps Gyula Illyés, Tzara and Colette. The birth of the volume The Real Ady The memorial volume about Ady, The Real Ady by writer and journalist György Bölöni (1882- 1959), which for a long time had a significant impact on the academic literature relating to Ady's years in Paris, was published in the French capital in 1934.25 In order to subsequently finance the book, Bölöni launched a subscription drive, promising attractive, accurate printing as to the appearance and 400 pages in volume, including 44 pages of illustrations. The price was 30 francs or 10 pengős in Hungary and it was not sold by booksellers.26 “I should have written this book a long time ago, but my life of vicissitudes after the Hungarian revolutions has not allowed me for a long time,” he admits in the foreword. Besides facsimiles of manuscripts, letters and documents, the volume includes a large number of photographs as illustrations taken at the beginning of the 1930s. Bölöni’s book with its undoubted merits and sometimes limits might have been lost in the mass of Ady literature had not an artist determining the visual language of the 1930s and following a new way of seeing, André Kertész, enhanced it with his series of photographs. Bölöni must have met Kertész in 1925-1926. The photographer was influenced by Bölöni’s inspiration, and presumably thought of representing his respect for Ady in the language of photography. Yet we can no longer know whether it was Bölöni’s or Kertész’s idea, since Bölöni, who wrote a competent, analytical review of Kertész very early on, referred to the photographer raising the idea of taking photographs of Ady's Paris in 1930.27 However, elsewhere he talked about “photos made for my book".28 41
