Kertesz and categories

The more we go on, we, photographers are put into categories :

Advertising, Photojournalism, Still life, Landscape, LF or not..., etc, etc...ar tistic or not, pictures in each format size, from Minox to ULF.

Ouf ! they are so many categories and types that I apologize in advance to the o ne I forgot.

Well, Kertesz in his time, used to do a lot of pictures, of many different categ ories. Jumping one day from portraits, to the next, still life. Most of the time they were assignements !

-The still life of "the fork" was an ad. -The series of distorted portraits was an assignement too, for a magazine giving him "carte blanche" !

Today it's Art.

So, before any category we could be put in, there is only one that matters. We are PHOTOGRAPHERS, whatever we do or use.

Andre Kertesz is by far one of my favorite photographic artists and I feel, exemplifies versatility in his craft. "Mondrians Pipe and Glasses" is my favorite of his still lifes. But then flip through a few pages and there's "Lost Cloud". Perhaps I'm also biased by the fact that he closely resembles my grandfather as a young man.

Kertesz>..... One of my favourites too. I don't agree with you,guillaume, in the sense that in those times photographers like Kertesz were artists indeed. There were not many photographers that were producing only commercial work .Most of them were artist that had to get to a compromise to be able to live and do their personal work.. "The fork", as you state,might have been an assignment for an ad, but it doesn't mean that the piece was not superlative. Let's not forget that we have to thank people like Kertesz, Stieglitz, Sanders, macPherson, Strands etc. etc. for their courage in showing us the possibilities of the camera in conjunction with a creative mind . I don't like classifications either, but i do call myself an artist that uses a camera as his tool. I put my heart in my work, and in no way i want one of my portfolios to be put at the same level with with a wedding album.

Domenico, I'm making the same point as you and I agree with you.You misunderstanded me. Today, if you are put in a certain category it's difficult to get out of it. People in newspapers don't take any risk ;If you are good taking shoes, they would never think of you for...boots. I am calling myself an artist too, but I wouldn't have a problem if the wedding pictures close to my portfolio were from, Seydou Keita by example.Wedding photography was his day living, he didn't know himself as an artist, an artisan maybe, until he was discovered by some curators. Now his pictures are in a lot of museums. Robert Doisneau used to work for Renault, full time job. He didn't realize for a long time that he had treasures among his negatives.

These peoples that we admire today, we call them artists. At their time they didn't have the title, the prestige and money coming from that. Yes,they cleared the way for us. Anyway, the important thing in photography is to have something to say in pictures.

KERTESZ- in hungarian language it means man who works in the garden. And my surname KAPOSZTAS means man who works with cabbage.