KERTÉSZ, André. Distortion #33.

KERTÉSZ, André. Distortion #33. 1962.

Gelatin silver print; image size 350 x 235 mm; printed 1984; signed, dated and titled ‘No. 33’ by André Kertész in pencil to verso; print as new; in black wooden window mount frame with glass, very slight wear to edges of frame; overall framed size 550 x 425 mm.

Gelatin silver print, signed and titled by André Kertész, from a later extension to his iconic Distorsions series.

André Kertész, an early pioneer of photojournalism, was a significant influence on Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson, with the latter reportedly saying ‘each time André Kertész’s shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating’. In 1933, Kertész was commissioned to make a series of figure studies by the French magazine Le Sourire, for which he produced his Distortions series. Reflecting on the perceived distortions of a swimmer’s body as they travel through water, he used a funhouse mirror to replicate this effect. Now recognised as a pivotal body of work in the development of surrealist photography, the distortion photographs are an early transgression of the boundary between representation and conceptualism in photography.

The Distortion portraits were first exhibited in 1933 and made Kertész into a leading figure in experimental photography. In 1962, he returned to his distortion series and produced another extension of the series including Distortion #33.

Provenance: Christie’s, 16 November 2002, lot 56 (together with Distortion #24A); Sotheby’s, 21 March 2006, lot 77A.

SKU: 2126391