Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom, 1917. From the Hungarian period (1894 – 1925), this image, considered today an icon, enters within Kertész’s research to develop his own language, far from the fashionable trends, that pushed him to experiment with night shots or staging his own brother Janö in classic paintings. The produced images in this period reveal a large amount of freedom of technical and thematic experimentation. © André Kertész, Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France

Satiric Dancer, 1926. Having settled in Paris in 1925, Kertész would see many Hungarian artists living there. In the atelier of sculptor Étienne Beöthy he shot the portrait of the dancer Magda Förstner, laying on a couch, mimicking the pose of a sculpture standing on her left. Other pictures date from that same time, in the ateliers of Mondrian, Zadkine and Léger, as well as the portraits by Sergei Eisenstein, Calder and other artists. © André Kertész, Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France

Distortion n° 41, 1933. The series “distortion” produced in Paris around the 1930’s is one of the examples from Kertész’s production where his interest in experimentation and his playful sense are found once again. The feminine bodies turn into half abstract masses thank to the distorting mirrors, and the images shot can be placed between caricature and erotica. © André Kertész, Collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris

Washington Square, January 9, 1954. After a few difficult years at the beginning of his life in America, Kertész and his wife Elizabeth are given American nationality and move into an apartment in Washington Square. During these years he experiments with a telephoto lens and zoom, witness and observer of the activity downstairs, shooting also urban series that are mostly melancholic, featuring the wanderers in the snow, the chimneys and the balconies. © André Kertész, Collection of Leslie, Judith and Gabrielle Schreyer

July 3, 1979. After the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1977, Kertész begins his interest in Polaroid. The series then produced goes back to the meditative atmosphere present in many of his past works, and can also be seen as a synthesis of his stylisict research. Shortly after, his work would become the subject of a solo show in the Centre Georges Pompidou. © André Kertész, Courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery