New York
1943
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 22.9 x 20 cm (9 x 7 7/8 in.) sheet: 25.3 x 20.6 cm (9 15/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation
Accession Number
2001.124.4
Art Historical Context
André Kertész's *New York* (1943) captures the vibrant pulse of the city during World War II, a time when Kertész, a Hungarian-born photographer who had immigrated from Paris to the United States in 1936, was deeply immersed in urban street photography. Having arrived in New York amid personal and professional challenges, Kertész inspiration in the city's dynamic architecture and everyday life, transforming ordinary moments into poetic compositions. This gelatin silver print, measuring nearly 23 x 20 cm, exemplifies his modernist sensibility—emphasizing geometric forms, light, and shadow to ev...
About the Artist
André Kertész
André Kertész, born Andor Kertész on July 2, 1894, in Budapest, Hungary, to a middle-class Jewish family, initially pursued a conventional path as a clerk at the Budapest Stock Exchange after graduating from the Academy of Commerce in 1912. Self-taught in photography after purchasing his first camera that year, he captured his early poetic visions of Hungarian landscapes and peasant life, includin...