Funhouse Women

            The medium of photography was influenced greatly by Andre Kertesz from his different ways of doing things. Kertesz was born in Budapest in 1894 but spent many years of his life in America that gave him many inspirations in different places and shaped his own style. After going to school he got a job at the Budapest stock exchange except he knew in his heart that this was not what he was meant to do.  This man was truly an artist at heart and could look at something and see the beauty in the littlest detail people would normally not notice. His love for photography didn’t end when he was drafted in the army. Instead he documented his daily life and the lives of the other soldiers. He even did studies in Paris after he moved there against his mother’s wishes and he became very popular. In 1923 Kertesz created the series of 200 photographs that were of two nude models called Distortion. I picked a few of these photographs to analyze because they are his most famous and interesting. The photographs of the woman are distorted by using funhouse mirrors and are so distorted that sometimes the woman are unrecognizable. These photographs appeared in the two French magazines called Le Sourire and Arts et metriers graphiques. He next published these photographs in his book Distortions. At first this series did not go over to well in America but we now appreciate them more today. Kertesz’s career lasted seventy years and he was very successful. Not many people can say that they created a new way of photography, which is what makes Kertesz such a reputable artist.