Michael Weinstein

Curator Robert Gurbo, assistant to Andre Kertesz in his old age, has put together an exhibition of the modernist master's photography that is a tour de force by any standards. Having carefully selected fifty-three images, Gurbo shows that Kertesz perfected every modernist genre, from the street shot to the surrealist dreamscape, with all stops in between. As deeply sympathetic as one mind can be with another, Gurbo chooses as his favorite suite of images a collection from the time when Kertesz was in New York, making a living by shooting interiors for House and Garden magazine, and profoundly alienated from the country to which he fled to escape the Nazis. It is worth following Gurbo's lead; the most moving image in the show is "Solitude," shot from the window of Kertesz's apartment overlooking New York's Washington Square Park, in which a lonely man sits slumped on a bench behind a dense web of denuded tree branches, surrounded by implacable dull snow.

Andre Kertesz shows at Stephen Daiter Gallery, 311 West Superior, (312)787-3350, through May 28.

(2005-04-26)

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