The Hungarian Quarterly, 1996 (47. évfolyam, 181. szám)
PHOTOGRAPHY - Károly Kincses: A Belated Interview with André Kertész (Illustrated)
there was a very fashionable professional photographer, a homosexual, who did portraits of actors and actresses. He was the local celebrity photographer. His name began with A: Italian sounding—not that he was Italian, it was just his professional name. [Angelo—KK.] Anyway, he let me know that if I wanted to see what professional photography was like, I should pay him a visit... And I did indeed get to make the acquaintance of several terrific chaps there... They did things like blocking in negatives and other tricks of that kind: that was of no interest to me... 1 had a few interesting pictures of Budafok. So I said I can take you out there, if you want, and show you where it is. Let's go out and do something together. Then a few weeks later I set the thing up. I went out with them: there were about fifteen of us. In my pocket I had the little 4.5 x 6 cm camera that had been with me during the war, a little Goerz Tenax. The others came with 9 x 12s or 13 x 18s, with tripods and everything. We won't be able to move, I said. You have to be kidding in a place that's full of wine cellars. They just didn't understand how I was able to work with such a small machine. "Well," I said, "everything you see was taken with this." And what about the quality? "The quality is just fine", I said. Anyway, we all met once more afterwards in order to see the results. All of them were disappointed; that was not how they had imagined it. "Look at my pictures," I said. "I can't say anything else. You all liked it, which is why I suggested we make the trip." I didn't try any more. You were 30 years old when you left Hungary to spend years in Paris. What led you to choose that city in particular? I went to Paris because I just had to go, I didn't know why. I had a small amount of money to keep me going for a while, I had my creative power, and I had my dreams. There were three of us brothers; my father had died, and it had been Mother's wish that the family should stay together. In 1925, however, she told me that if I still wanted to go, then I should go; she didn't want to hold me back. She could see that Hungary was not the place to do what I wanted to do. So, one day she said, "You're right, son, there's no place for you here. What you want to do, you can’t. Go, laddie." So go I did. I set off for Paris on the 25th of August, or maybe it was September. My work went the rounds, from hand to hand, in the cafés, and more and more people got to know it. I was then happy to give away to my acquaintances pictures that would nowadays fetch fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. As I never did have much of a head for business, I don't see a red cent from that nowadays. After 14 months, a dealer put on an exhibition. Thank you. Gradually, I was getting invitations everywhere; things were going fine. I carried on with what I had imbibed in Budapest, and that spirit suited the French perfectly. They put what I was doing down to the Parisian spirit; they don't know it's half Paris, half Budapest. Take this dancer reclining on a divan, for example. She was called Magda Förstner, and she was an excellent dancer. She had appeared at the Vigadó cabaret here in Budapest and was already a famous artiste when she looked for an engagement in Paris. I met her after she had arrived. "Magda," 106 The Hungarian Quarterly