“The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.” - André Kertsz

Born in Budapest in 1894, André Kertsz has been acclaimed as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. Kertsz bought his first camera in 1912 and was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914 for four years, during which he photographed behind the lines and had some of his first photographs published in magazines. When he moved to Paris in 1925, Kertsz began to work as a freelance photographer for dozens of different European magazines. At this point, his photographic career flourished, leading to his first exhibition in 1927 and the publication of his first book, Enfants, in 1933. After his move to New York in 1936, Kertsz soon gained popularity in the United States, while continuing to have his work exhibited and published all over the world. As a tribute to his life’s work as a photographer, André Kertsz: The Manchester Collection was published for his ninetieth birthday in 1984, a year before his death. The book, a catalogue printed in the form of a Festschrift, is divided into six sections, each headed with acknowledgements. A greeting from Henri Cartier-Bresson precedes the collection. At the end of the collection is a biography, outlining the main events in Kertsz’s life. The information included in the biography is key when analysing the collection. For example, having read that in 1939 Kertsz became an enemy alien, forbidden to photograph outside his house, I realised that there are no photographs from this period up until around 1944, the year he became an American citizen. Apart from this gap, the photographs range somewhat evenly between the years 1914 and 1980.

According to the introduction, “the collection is grouped into six sections which allow the catalogue to be arranged with a more interesting effect than a chronological order.” These sections, however, are very broad and disorganised. Section four, for example, has the title “New-York pictures with buildings, streets, people, rooftops, subway studies, a sequence, and including a print from Paris and London.” However, it also includes photographs from San Antonio, Chicago and other parts of the United States. In addition, other sections of the book also contain pictures of buildings, streets, people and rooftops. The arrangement may have an interesting effect, but it is also very confusing. In the end, it would have made more sense to lay out the collection in chronological order. André Kertsz was a photographer who travelled, as can be observed in his work. Therefore, why not have the photographs arranged in such a way that demonstrates the different stages in his life? Starting, for instance, with the photographs from Hungary dating back to 1914 and 1915. The photograph titled ‘going to the front,’ portraying a long, curved line of soldiers marching together, is very significant, especially since most of the negatives were destroyed during the Hungarian Revolution. Yet, it is given almost no worth, placed at the very bottom of page twenty eight, under two other photographs, one of a male nude in 1920 and the other of two young boys learning to play the violin in 1923. The collection, made up of two hundred and ninety seven black and white photographs, covers seventy years of the photographer’s life and includes photographs from the United States, France, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Belgium and England. The viewer is taken from one country to another, back and forth between decades, and, in some cases, there isn’t even a common subject that ties the photographs together.

On the other hand, though the photographs are very mixed, they do not clash. For example, page 33 contains three photographs, one from Newton Country, USA in 1957, another from New Mexico, USA in 1970 and a third from Dunkirk, France in 1930. Though they come from different parts of the world and different decades, they look good on the same page because they have a common subject: landscapes with trees and lakes. Similarly, in section two, titled “Photographs mainly from France including animal studies, street scenes and fairground performers,” there are two facing pages, 50 and 51, containing photographs that look good placed side by side. The composition is completely different and one photograph is over forty years older than the other, yet they work well together because each of the two photographs shows a scene on a French beach and both photographs contain umbrellas. Some of the photographs placed together in The Manchester Collection are indeed very similar, which makes me ask myself whether André Kertsz planned on having a number of photographs with the same theme and collected them as he went. It looks as though some parts of the book were arranged in such a way that photographs with a common subject or style were placed close to each other, while other parts are just made up of random scenes placed together on the same page, regardless of their date, location or subject matter. Section six is the most successful, mainly because its layout is clear and its contents relate to its title, “Pictures using abstraction and distortion, with some recent photographs in England.” This section holds some of the more famous photographs by Kertsz, including the distortion of a swimmer under water, the man dressed in a long, black coat observing a broken bench with his hands behind his back and ‘Mondrian's glasses and pipe.’

André Kertsz, an originator of the photo essay, is now recognised as an influential figure of photojournalism. Included in section four is a sequence of twelve photographs, of which the first three show two black men, one holding the other up and gradually lowering him down until he is laying on the sidewalk. A white man seen walking by in the first photograph appears in the rest of the sequence with another white man. Together they help the black man up off the sidewalk, lay him down on the grass and cover him up with a blanket. The last photograph in the series shows the white man from the first photograph and the black man standing next to a black policeman, who is holding him by the arm. The story is unclear, it seems as though a number of the photographs from the sequence were not included, leaving it incomplete. No written information is given, other than the place, New York, and year, 1970. The sequences in this book are presented by placing a number of photographs on the same page in chronological order, one leading to the next to form a story. This works well. However, when not part of a sequence, sometimes there are simply too many photographs placed together on the same page, which makes them harder to look at and read than, for example, the photographs placed on their own. In section two, page 71 includes four photographs, all of animals in France, but not taken in the same year. Each of these photographs carries a different message and slightly loses its individuality when placed with the others. The photograph on the top left shows a monkey dressed in a shirt, standing behind a camera, holding the tripod with one hand and looking at the camera with a serious expression. It is placed next to a much less comical photograph of a cheetah lying down, chained up to the side of an old house and looking straight at the camera. Some of the photographs deserve a page of their own and it is unclear why some stand on their own while others have to share the space. The photographs also vary in size, as they were taken at different times, using different cameras and printed on a variety of papers. The smaller photographs, even the more famous ones, are placed three or four to a page, making them appear less notable than the larger photographs.

Overall, in spite of having sections that leave the photographs badly organised, the book is successful as a catalogue in that it contains a wide variety of subjects, times and places, allowing the viewer to realise the extent of the photographer’s work over seventy years. The vast collection of photographs by André Kertsz shows that, with his camera, he truly had the ability to give reason to everything around him. His photographs, while beautifully composed, look spontaneous. “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.” With his camera, Kertsz captured everyday moments that would otherwise remain unnoticed. The Manchester Collection portrays this by containing photographs of everything from children, young couples, elderly people and animals to landscapes, street scenes, views from the window and still life. In many cases, this collection reveals scenes that no longer exist and it is thanks to photographers like André Kertsz that we can continue to experience them.