EyeWitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th century

by Marina Vaizey

A small and isolated Lost Cloud drifts we know not where next a bland New York skyscraper in 1937 and two years later A Melancholic Tulip droops in gentle despair as it elegantly expires. These two subtly haunting and brilliantly composed photographs by Andre Kertesz perhaps obliquely anticipate the cataclysm to come, and live on as two wistfully memorable images of a necessary exile. Kertesz (1894-1985) is one of the quintet of Hungarian Jewish photographers (all of whom modified their original Jewish names) acknowledged as among the greatest of the last century – Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Capa, Martin Munkacsi, Brassai – and who are here the most familiar among a galaxy of scores of staggeringly accomplished Hungarian photographers in a truly revelatory exhibition.

5 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2015