André Kertész was a key figure in expanding the language of modernist photography. He intuitively captured the poetry of modern urban life with its quiet, often overlooked incidents and comic, occasionally bizarre juxtapositions. By 1925, Kertész had arrived in Paris which was a magnet for aspiring artists such as Piet Mondrian and Constantin Brancusi who Kertész would befriend. István Beöthy was a fellow Hungarian émigré and a sculptor who would also fall into the same avant-garde circle as Kertész who all connected to the “new spirit.” It was in Beöthy’s studio where Kertész took the now iconic image, “Satiric Dancer” in 1926. The playful woman in the image is Magda Förstner. She was a Hungarian cabaret dancer and aspiring actress that Kertész had invited to the studio specifically for the shoot. Kertész recounted the situation decades later: “I said to her, ‘Do something with the spirit of the studio corner,’ and she started to move on the sofa. She just made a movement. I took only two photographs…People in motion are wonderful to photograph. No need to shoot a hundred rolls like people do today. It means catching the right moment. The moment when something changes into something else.” The image, designed to capture the “new spirit” now seems timeless in its appeal. It is heralded as one of the most successful and imaginative integrations of sculptural form, portraiture, and dynamic movement within the two-dimensional framework of the viewfinder. Henri Cartier-Bresson would later say about the photographer, “Whatever we have done, Kertész did first. We all owe something to Kertész,”

Satiric Dancer
gelatin silver print
1926
André Kertész (1894-1985)
(b. Hungary, d. NYC, USA)

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