Throughout much of his life, Hungarian photographer André Kertész labored much if not unknown then at least overlooked. Kertesz’s glory--and the reason he was for so long underrated--was the simplicity of his subjects. He caught everyday people in the small triumphs of life. “I shoot the little things, what everyone sees and doesn’t see,” Andre Kertesz told The Times just before his death. “ Kertesz recalled that his work was rejected by a Life magazine editor, who told him, “You talk too much with your pictures.”
“This is a mistake!” he shouted, retelling the story decades later. “You should talk with your pictures. I don’t touch the camera without expressing myself. . . . Ironically, Kertesz died as his photographs received their most widespread accolades in 1985.
”I still regard myself as an amateur today and I hope that’s what I’ll stay until the end of my life. Because I’m forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.”
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