Looking at a Photograph – André Kertész’s 1928 Meudon

Abstract

Focusing on André Kertész’s 1928 photograph of the Paris suburb, Meudon, I consider a phenomenological means for exploring aesthetic encounter with a photograph. Drawing on my own interpretive work with this image as well as student responses, I delineate a continuum of encounter ranging from partial seeing to deeper aesthetic insight. Making use of the hermeneutic designations suggested by philosopher Henri Bortoft (2012), I identify a lived continuum of aesthetic experience that extends from limited assimilation through a more involved appropriation to an engaged participatory understanding.

Keywords

• aesthetics, aesthetic experience, André Kertész, Henri Bortoft, , hermeneutics, hermeneutics of aesthetics, Meudon, phenomenology, phenomenology of aesthetics, visual studies