Paper is needed now. Bring it in any time.
Try and get to the Photographers’ Gallery before Oct 4th if you don’t want to miss On Reading, the collection of Hungarian born André Kertész. This is a trip through the years (from 1915 to 1979) taken for the eyes of readers via the lens of a master. (Cartier-Bresson credited Kertész with setting the scene later crystalised by himself and Robert Capa.)
Here’s the thing. Reading is everywhere. It’s more important than we give it credit for. And when we’re reading, we’re reading alone, at one with the world and ouirselves together. Kertész’s readers are caught heads down, engrossed in the page, in every place possible – on the beach in Cannes, on the roof in Greenwich Village, or just sitting on a wall.
One boy sits on a pile of old newspapers holding a war-time comic from 1944. The hand printed shop window sign hanging over him reads ‘Paper is needed now. Bring it in any time.’ As he reads to escape the world, it is in acute focus all around him. Just like the magnifying glass of the old man stooping over the secondhand book stall in Book Row, Manhattan. Kertész’s subjects are all of us. As they read the world waits.
On Reading, to 4th Oct, Photographers’ Gallery, Ramillies St, London W1.
