Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész

Art historian Albers (Joan Mitchell) disappoints with this biography of pioneering street photographer André Kertész. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in 1894 Budapest, Kertész received his first camera at 18. Unconcerned with rules from the start of his career, he deviated from the stiff portraiture of the time with unposed shots of ordinary folks and cityscapes of park benches and vacant lots. After serving in WWI, Kertész landed in Paris, where he fell in with a group of émigré artists like himself, including Man Ray and Piet Mondrian. The book catalogs Kertész’s early gallery shows and magazine work, his marriage to photographer Rogi André (whom he’d later leave for a former girlfriend), his 1936 move to America, his 17-year stint working for House & Garden magazine, and the attention he eventually received from museums like MoMA. Along the way, Albers leans excessively on Kertész’s letters and diaries, narrating tedious chunks of his childhood and dramatizing unremarkable moments at the expense of historical details that might have put Kertész’s work more thoroughly in context. Despite providing some valuable nuggets of information, this fails to fully capture the life and legacy of a key figure in 20th-century photography. (Jan.)