Distortions (André Kertész)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Distortions by André Kertész is a series of female nude figures photographed in funhouse mirrors date from 1933. They were made at the request of the humor magazine Le Sourire. The work is atypical for him.
He explains:
- "A Hungarian friend of mine introduced me to the editor of the magazine Le Sourire, a very French sort of magazine - satiric, risqué. Many artists worked for this publication. They had never published photos before. The editor asked me to do something. I bought two distorting mirrors in the flea market - the kind of thing you find in amusement parks. With existing light and an old lens invented by Hugo Meyer, I achieved amusing impressions. Some images like sculptures, others grotesque and frightening. I took about 140 photographs in a month, working two or three times a week. Le Sourire published a couple of them, and we planned a book, but it had to wait forty years to be published - but that is another story." artn.com
Having already toyed with using a fun-house mirror to photograph friends, he got two mirrors from a local amusement park and recruited Najinskaya Verackhatz and Nadia Kasine as his models. Twelve of the Distortions were published in the March 2, 1933 issue of Le Sourire and he was successful in getting another selection of them published in the September 15, 1933 issue of Arts et métiers graphiques. photostoots.com
Kertész describe the images as “Distortions” himself when he publishes the article “Caricatures and Distortions” in the periodical The Complete Photographer. The “Distortions” were published as a book in 1977 with a preface by the critic Hilton Kramer. in 1941.
See also
- Le Sourire, 2 mars 1933, with a text by Aimé-Paul Barancy : « Fenêtre ouverte sur l'au-delà »
- Distortion
