André Kertész “Window Views”

Bruce Silverstein (529 W 20th St.)

[Image: André Kertész "Children and Shadows in Park" (1951) © Estate of André Kertész]

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Following his move in 1952 to a 12th story apartment overlooking Washington Square Park, the 56-year-old Hungarian emigrant André Kertész would begin a series of modernist masterworks shot from his window that he would continue until his death in 1985. From the privacy of his home, Kertész honed his lens on anonymous city dwellers, capturing fragments of passersby on the streets below or reveling in the park, in an attempt to engage with his newfound community. Many of the photographs made by Kertész during this period expressed a voyeuristic quality that reflected the artist’s sense of isolation in his adopted homeland. Later in life, following the loss of his beloved wife Elizabeth, Kertész found himself in the same surroundings, amongst all their collective memories, voraciously experimenting with a Polaroid camera as a means of working through his overwhelming grief.