Robert Gurbo Introduction (2 results)

Hardcover, 127 pages. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Laura Lindgren (Jacket Design) (illustrator). First Edition. First Edition. Red cloth boards with gilding on outer spine. Pages are clean, binding is tight. Creasing, scuffing and minor soiling to dust jacket.

Couverture rigide. Condition: Neuf. Dust Jacket Condition: Neuf. Edition originale. New York, 2005. 1 volume/1. -- NEUF/NEW -- Reliure éditeur cartonnée pleine toile sous jaquette transparente . Format "carré" 13,2 x 13,5 cm ( 256 gr ). ------- 160 pages. *************" When Hungarian photographer André Kertész did not have access to an enlarger early in his career, he made contact prints instead. And he became quite adept with this size, creating miniature images with incredible depth and sophistication. A real feeling of youth and artistic exploration dominates these pictures, which span from 1912 to 1925. From the very joyous experiments with his brother, Jeno, in the countryside, to his idyllic romance with Elizabeth, from his portraits of WWI soldiers, to his later hospital stay as he convalesced from a wound, we witness Kertész explore different photographic interests and subjects. In order to compose for such a small format, Kertész needed to ground his images in strong lines and geometry, forging the hallmarks of his later modernist vision. Thus, the Hungarian Contacts, as they are called, chronicle not only Kertész s coming of age as a man, but also his development as an artist. Before emigrating to the U.S. in 1936, Kertész left the contact prints with an agent in Paris, who was later forced to flee the city under Nazi occupation. She buried the cache of tiny works in a makeshift bomb shelter on a farm in southern France. Kertész lost contact with her, and decades passed before the agent re-discovered Kertész because of his Bibliothéque Nationale exhibition in Paris in 1963. Thankfully, she led him to the site where he recovered the still-buried treasure. Though some of the Hungarian Contacts were part of the National Gallery of Art s 2004 retrospective and though Kertész enlarged some of the images in his later years, a broad selection of them are presented together here as art objects in their own right and in the size that Kertész originally intended for them. The book commemorates an important show of the work at Silverstein Photography in New York City and includes an engaging personal essay by Robert Gurbo, the curator of the estate. This new volume presents the Hungarian Contact Prints many unpublished before now in a wonderfully small format that enchants and refreshes. "" DENISE WOLFF ***************** ref 142a.