Getty Museum
Martinique
Creator
André KertészAmerican Photographer · 1894–1985
All works by this person →> [T]he moment always dictates in my work....Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see...I see a situation and I know that it's right. > > --André Kertész André Kertész bought his first camera and made his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. After years of amateur snapshot photography in his native Hungary, he moved to Paris in 1925 and began
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- January 1, 1972
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 504f38b4-6d3a-4262-bde6-dd0f13b7ecb9
> André Kerté¬sz and his wife, Elizabeth Saly (died 1977) were on vacation on the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles when he took this picture. They shared a balcony with the adjacent hotel room. He immediately made some unsuccessful attempts to compose a picture utilizing the glass partition of the balcony and incorporating boats passing on the horizon. On New Year's Day, a Frenchspeaking family moved into the adjacent room. The mother, father, and children took turns occupying a position at the railing on their balcony, producing a diffuse shadow on Kertész's side. Full of suggestive human content, this photograph is built around a solidly Formalist vision. > > Originally published in *André Kertész*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Weston Naef (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994), 106. ©1994, J. Paul Getty Museum.
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