André Kertész

Janet Sirmon Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2013

Nicholas Durcot, ed., André Kertész: Sixty Years of Photography 1912-1972 (New York, 1972), p. 167

André Kertész (Paris: Centre d'Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, 1977), unpaginated

André Kertész: Diary of Light 1912-1985 (New York: The International Center of Photography, 1986), pl. 12

In Focus: André Kertész (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994), p. 103

Pierre Borhan, André Kertész: His Life and Work (Boston, 1994), p. 283 (variant)

Michel Frizot and Annie-Laur Wanaverbecq, André Kertész (New Haven and Paris, 2010), p. 263

“It was a great day for American photography when André Kertész landed on our shores,” wrote the New York Post about Hungarian-born Kertész just a few years after his immigration (Andre Kertész: Of Paris and New York, p. 112). Despite formative and impactful artistic periods in Hungary and France, it was the United States where Kertész would reside the longest. Forced to flee his community in Paris in the wake of WWII, Kertész immigrated to New York City for employment at Keystone Studios. Puddle (Empire State Building, New York) is characteristic of his exploratory street photography. Mindful of the city’s geometries, Kertész discovered a surrealist composition of the Empire State Building, inverting it in a puddle.

Other prints of Puddle (Empire State Building, New York) are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and The Centre Pompidou, Paris.