“Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d’être. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d’être, which lives on in itself.”
~ Andre Kertész
(1894 - 1985)
At first glance, our eye is attracted to a beautiful white urn on a cool marble tabletop. Upon further looking, we see a crystal cup holding a mouse, which is also on the table. Then, if we continue looking, a snake is wrapped around the urn and the cup. Andre is well ensconced in New York now, but through this image, he shows us that he has not lost any of his earlier visual prowess in his masterful use of shadow, geometric composition, and the unexpected, almost surreal subject juxtaposition.
It’s a deceivingly complex image that works on so many levels. The longer you revel in it, it’s both a meditation on the fragility of life in the delicate beauty of the flower and on the ever-present possibility of danger, as exemplified by the snake.
