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

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the Puppet Collection of the National Theatre Mu- seum.47 In the first half of the 1920s, some of the young artists who went to France from Flungary had neither acquaintances nor financial means, thus they were pleased to find a temporary abode and a creative group of friends in Blattner’s puppet company.

Géza Blattner had satisfactory finances primarily due to the business of his wife, Helén Sulyok, who had a successful lampshade workshop. Fie rented a villa in Boulogne-sur Seine and was able to employ several people. His colleagues included artist Tivadar Fried, who arrived in Paris in 1925, and painter Szilárd Detre, who joined the company in 1927 and acted as writer, translator and director. Painter Sándor A. Tóth,

Helén Sulyok’s relative who arrived in Boulogne in 1929, artist Zsigmond Károlyi (Sigismund Kolos-Vary), as well as Marie Vassilieflf, who was of Russian descent, played a significant role.48

André Kertész also had contact with the company, perhaps thanks to the painter Szilárd Detre. Several of the photographer’s biographers emphasise his attraction to showmen, acrobats, buffoons and puppets - to his childhood memories. One of his first photos after his arrival in Paris was taken of such a scene and he often returned to the subject. He could feel at home at the Blattners’ and in the home of their host, sculptor József Csáky, where he photographed their amicable and cheerful gatherings, and it’s no wonder that he also included himself in one of the pictures. He accompanied the company to Lyon, the original home of Guignol (a puppet similar to László Vitéz) and took photographs for the programme of their plays performed at the Puppetry Congress of 1929. It is thanks to Kertész that we have photographed scenes from the shadow play When Hearts Meet, the marionette play The Fisherman and the Moon’s Silver, The

SZATIRIKUS TÁNCOSNŐ (FÖRSTNER MAGDA), PÁRIZS, 1926/

SATIRICAL DANCER (MAGDA FÖRSTNER), PARIS, 1926 PIM, V. 5579/58

Fox and the Stork performed with Tivadar Fried’s marionettes, and the grotesque pantomime59