Stairs with Children, Paris, 1933
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 × 9 ⅜ in.
Stamped on verso: photographer’s ‘Rue du Cotentin’ copyright credit
June 23, 2025
André Kertész had a thing for stairs—many of the Hungarian-born photographer's best known works feature stairways. Kertész is recognized as a master of composition, who used strategic camera angles—often taken from an elevation—to create arrangements that lead the eye through an image. This photograph demonstrates how stairs yielded an equally fruitful picture-making device.
The image achieves something close to a time-lapse, as our gaze travels the steps. Beginning with the boy at the top, our eyes slide down with his friend on the handrail, to meet the children gathered at the bottom. There is a poetic quality to the way that the photograph is centered around the group of youthful subjects playing in the light, and the tonal shift that occurs when our attention moves to the sedate older couple ascending a less brightly illuminated section of the stairs on the right.
