I was lucky to have a free afternoon in Paris to catch the first full Kertesz retrospective in Europe. Early on, Kertesz made contact prints mostly, but later on reworked some of the negatives using an enlarger. It reminded me of my early days using film when I’d load paper in the easel and move the paper and enlarger until I had improved the composition.
At some point in my digital work, I really stopped cropping as a discipline to compose in camera. Seeing what Kertesz did has inspired me to start cropping images again. I’ve chosen the 8.5×11 format to maximize print area just as I used to crop to 8×10 or 11 x 14 photographic paper.
A crop of a city tableau:
