Photograph or Moving Image by ForeignPhotographer/Artist
Inventory Number
82-PHF-195-09
The photo appears to show a large bullet hole, and spider web-like cracks. So exactly what happened in this room overlooking Montmartre in Paris…? It could be the opening of a great detective novel, but in fact, this picture dates from a time when photographic negatives were made of glass, and it’s not a window that is damaged, but the negative itself. To make this photo, André Kertész printed from the damaged negative just as it was.
Kertész, who had evacuated to the United States during World War II, returned to Paris in 1963 to find among the negatives he had left behind this one shot. “An accident helped me to produce a beautiful effect,” he commented. And thus a photograph snapped casually to test out a new lens was transformed, by the “eye” of the photographer, into a masterpiece.
(SAKAMOTO Kyoko)
The photo appears to show a large bullet hole, and spider web-like cracks. So exactly what happened in this room overlooking Montmartre in Paris…? It could be the opening of a great detective novel, but in fact, this picture dates from a time when photographic negatives were made of glass, and it’s not a window that is damaged, but the negative itself. To make this photo, André Kertész printed from the damaged negative just as it was.
Kertész, who had evacuated to the United States during World War II, returned to Paris in 1963 to find among the negatives he had left behind this one shot. “An accident helped me to produce a beautiful effect,” he commented. And thus a photograph snapped casually to test out a new lens was transformed, by the “eye” of the photographer, into a masterpiece.
(SAKAMOTO Kyoko)