Tag Archives: Paul Strand

Verity Babbs: Kersting’s Modern Quirks – A Visual Essay

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The limited number of biographical writings on Anthony “Tony” Kersting acknowledge his place among (and arguably his supremacy over) the greatest architectural photographers of all time, having “built up a matchless archive of architectural treasures”. What has rarely, if ever, been discussed, however, is the aesthetic appeal of Kersting’s portrait works to be found among the thousands of photographs housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art’s Conway Library.

Kersting’s architectural photography imbues his selected structures with a feel of stoic timelessness. This visual essay takes previously unanalysed works from Kersting’s portfolio and examines how the photographer was not only taking images of his modern day, but composing them in the aesthetic style of his modern day. These compositional decisions correspond to the 19th and 20th Century fine art shift through Impressionism, Surrealism and Pop Art. That Kersting may have seen these specific works is postulation.

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Natalia Goncharova, Cyclist, 1913

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Dziga Vertov, Still from Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + René Magritte, Not to Be Reproduced, 1937 + René Magritte, The Fair Captive, 1947 + René Magritte, The Human Condition II, 1935
Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Paul Strand, Wall Street, 1915

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Lewis Hine, Untitled Photograph + Lewis Hine, Untitled Photograph + Pablo Picasso, Bottle of Pernod, 1912 + Juan Gris, Siphon and Bottles, 1910

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857 + Camille Pissarro, La Cueillette des pois, 1887

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Berthe Morisot, The Harbour at Lorient, 1869

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Georges Seurat, Le Cirque, 1891

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Peter Blake, Marilyn Monroe Merz Screen ABC and ABC, undated

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Abbie Rowe, President Kennedy Departs Andrews Air Force Base for West Palm Beach, Florida, 12:10PM, 1961 + Unknown, The Beatles Arrive at JFK International Airport, 1964

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Avril, 1893

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Alan Beeton, Reposing, 1929 + Denise Bellon, Salvador Dalí at the International Exhibition of Surrealism, 1938

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + André de Dienes, Marilyn Monroe playing on the Beach, 1949

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Terry Gilliam, Harvest Time for Crunchy Frogs, 1974

 

Left to Right: AF Kersting, The Conway Library + Alfred Stieglitz, Winter, Fifth Avenue, 1892

Verity Babbs
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Oxford Micro-Internship Participant