The fork
November 16, 2017
I have Kertész on the brain. I bought a used copy of “Andre Kertesz: Sixty Years of Photography” this weekend at Arcana books and I must have looked through it 20 times already. It’s in my bedroom, atop of a chest of drawers very close to the bed. I keep grabbing it right before I go to sleep. It’s a used hardcover originally published in 1978. The pages feel old on my fingertips but the pages are still glossy. There’s an inscription in the cover to some unknown person on some unknown birthday in 1986. It’s a first edition.
This book really speaks to me. Volumes. It’s my first book of his and for the life of me I can’t figure out why I didn’t buy it earlier. His images are so much more impactful in print–his contrasts make so much more sense on paper than on a screen and his compositions are even more finite and absolute when framed in hard glossy white boarders. It’s a joy. It’s an absolute joy. Incidentally I find his use of longer lenses topical considering how I’ve been feeling with the 50mm as of late. I’m sure he would have thought it funny to hear anyone referring to 50 as long but that’s neither here nor there.
What draws me to his work is his perfect geometric composition forged in a delicate dance between physical matter and light. He’s infinitely aware of the everything in his scene–directions of his shadows, reflectivity of metal, softness of a bounce… he’s always in complete and utter control of what will be black and what will be white, leaving nothing to chance. Everything is intentional. I can feel his feet moving and winding around his scene, finding the perfect space to render his perfect compositions and contrasts. His street scenes feel like paintings to me sometimes, especially some of the winter scenes– the ones he shot from above on a longer lens. The whole frame compresses into this tapestry of white tones punctuated by hard black strokes from trees and roads. It’s so graphic it could have been illustrated.
And you can find that same tonal perfection (albeit the opposite way around) in his still-lifes, like “The fork,” for which my image is named. It’s a simple image that we all have taken…
I love this description from “The melancholy life of the amazing André Kertész” by Noel Bourcier:
This photograph was shown at the ‘Salon de l’Escalier’ (Paris, 1928) and at ‘Film und Foto’ (Stuttgart, 1929) and was used in an
advertisement for the silversmiths Bruckman-Bestecke. The purity of the
composition matches the function of the object – the fork is not depicted merely as a formally beautiful object, but also retains its qualities as a utensil. With
this vivid description of the spirit of an object, Kertész fulfilled an important artistic goal.
It was the original photographic incarnation of the expression form and function. Which brings me to my image. When I shot it, I was hot and miserable and not even remotely interested in making an interesting image. My mind was purely focused on staying safely wrapped in the cool shadow of the pop-up tent I was hiding in and as close as I could be to the fans–our saving grace on this freakishly hot fall day. I was supervising a commercial shoot and for some reason we were having record highs. Anyway, I looked down, pissy and hot and miserable and saw this frame plain as day. Like Kertész I try to always have a camera on me, so I framed up, shuffled my feet a little to get what I was after and made my version of “The fork.”
HC-B once said of Kertész, “Each time Andre Kertész’s shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating.” After I took made my image, some of the crew looked at me a bit strange and asked why I was taking pictures of the ground. I just pointed and the shadows. I have no idea if they got it or not, but I can tell you that when I hear my camera’s shutter click, I know my heart is beating.
Shot on my Leica M7, amber filter, 35mm Summicron on Tri-X pushed to 800 at the Icon.