Vintage photo of the day March 17, 2011

Today’s image of the day is called Stairs of Mont­martre, Paris by the late mas­ter Hun­gar­ian pho­tog­ra­pher Andre Kertesz, and it was shot in 1925. Kertesz is one of my all time favorite pho­tog­ra­phers and more of his work will surely be fea­tured in the future.

Stairs of Mont­martre, Paris — 1925 by Andre Kertesz

What makes this, and tons of other Kertesz images fan­tas­tic is the pre­cise and delib­er­ate com­po­si­tion. Kertesz was sim­ply a mas­ter at guid­ing your eye to inter­est­ing places in the pho­to­graph. The shapes of the shad­ows and the posi­tion of the rail­ings are both delight­ful to look at and they guide your eye per­fectly toward the humans in the photo.

Kertesz was also keenly aware of all planes of focus in an image and how they work together. The con­nec­tion between the fore­ground, midground and the back­ground ele­ments of this image helps to sug­gest a story as well as make the image graph­i­cally striking.