Skip navigation
Search

L'intime plaisir de lire

Exhibition, Studio
7 May - 9 Jun 2004

During the nearly seventy years of his career André Kertész took pictures of people reading - while sitting or laying down, at home or in the street, being alone or in the midst of a crowd. 'L'intime plaisir de lire' presents over 40 of these images, most of them made between 1912 and 1981 in Hungary, France and America, the three countries in which Kertész lived.

Date
7 May - 9 Jun 2004
Location
Noorderlicht Fotogalerie (locatie USVA), Munnekeholm 10, Groningen

André Kertész ranks amongst the most influential photographers of the 20th century. His restrained style and his eye for the passing but telling detail were followed widely. As Henri Cartier-Bresson once acknowledged this achievement: “Whatever we have done, Kertész did first.”

Kertész (1894-1985) made some world-famous images, notably the still lives of pipes, glasses and tulips in the Parisian studio of painter Piety Mondriaan (1926). Also well known are the Distortions he made around 1933 using female models and distorting mirrors.

Street photography however was his forte. Wandering around, his keen eye was looking for coincidence. It resulted in quiet, very often poetic images of everyday life – like those of reading people.

Kertész used some of these pictures in his book ‘On Reading’ (1971), most however remained hidden in his archives. Presenting well known as well as little known images from the collection of the Patrimoine Photographique (Paris), ‘L’intime plaisir de lire’ pays tribute to a great photographer.

This exhibition is organized in cooperation with Patrimoine Photographique, Centre Culturel Français in Groningen and the Hungarian Embassy in The Hague.

On display