“I photographed real life - not the way it was, but the way I felt it. That is the most important thing, not analyzing but feeling”
~ André Kertész
(1894-1985)
Most of us walking past the Empire State Building would naturally tend to look up and photograph it from that angle. But Andre was not like anyone else. He was one of the handful of truly great geniuses of this medium. His great gift was for time and again to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. He would often do the complete opposite to how most people perceive the world.
He always had a camera with him. On a rainy, late summer day in 1967 he was on his way to visit his great Hungarian photographer friend Cornell Capa (1918 - 2008) an amazing photographer and human being who was one of my early mentors and the founder of the ICP Museum. Cornell practically lived across the street from the Empire State Building. Andre was surprised and delighted to see that the tallest building in the world at the time could be de constructed and turned upside down through a simple reflection in a puddle.. Such visual alacrity
