KERTÉSZ,
the man who never liked America, even though he spent most of his life there
the man who, during the last years of his life was afraid of hippies on the fast living Washington Square, full of drug pushers, where he lived,
who became very much alone when his wife Elizabeth, died.
whose hearing deteriorated and movement slowed down. He became old.
Around whom the world slowly closed in.
and who, not resigning himself to this, discovered a new world for himself,
where he was at home, where no one could harm him,
where at any time he could safely take out his used camera, a Polaroid, which proved to be most useful for the photographing of his home, since the pictures did not need to be taken out for developing and enlarging,
which then and there, in that situation proved to be the most satisfactory, in fact the only adequate situation.
This world consists of the wide window sills of a two and a half room apartment in New York City, with pictures of Elizabeth before she passed away two years before, little glass statues, flowers, where his volume consisting of Polaroid shots taken between 1979–1981, entitled "From my Window”, dedicated to the memory of his wife was born, almost entirely with the help of his own silhouette.
And then, beginning the second half of his eighties, Kertész was able to create yet another valid, important and entirely new artistic period out of objects dear to him, polarized pictures of memory traces. He created it for himself, and we are the beneficiaries.
A part of the objects in his home which he photographed were sent to Hungary after Kertész died in accordance with his last wishes, becoming the property of the André Kertész memorial house, under the guardianship of the Hungarian Museum of Photography.
Safeguarding them is in itself a large chore, but we had wished that these relics would fulfill some function beyond being objects of reverence, gain a new lease on life. Let someone write about them or let them again find themselves before the lens of a camera. We thought, maybe...
HERENDI
Then came ... Péter Herendi,
who, despite his many exhibitions has probably never once in his lifetime photographed an actual scene, a given situation. Instead he constructs the stage of his photography, he chooses the objects to be on the pictures, thus building a very unique life work, typical of him only in our country's life.
Following this we had only one task remaining:
organize a meeting between Kertész's objects and Péter Herendi's camera. The results you can see at the exhibition and in the catalog.
(Károly Kincses)