Flowers, New York

1977

His wife Elizabeth dies

Elizabeth, who had created and run a successful cosmetic business for years, dies of cancer; to deal with the loss, Kertész falls back on his new network of friends, often visiting them to talk. By this time he has learned basic English and speaks what his friends call “Kertészian”, a mixture of Hungarian, English and French.

24. juni 1977 – 2. oktober 1977

Exhibition: Documenta 6

1977–1982

Honours, 1977–1982

In 1977 he receives the Mayor’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture in New York (and again in 1981); in 1980 the Medal of the City of Paris and the first Annual Award of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers; in 1981 an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Bard College; and in 1982 the National Grand Prize of Photography in Paris and the 21st Annual George Washington Award from the American Hungarian Foundation.

1979

Polaroid gives him an SX-70 camera

The Polaroid Corporation gives him one of its new SX-70 cameras, which he experiments with into the 1980s.

1980

Arnaud Maggs’s portrait mosaic

Kertész sits for the Canadian artist Arnaud Maggs, resulting in the large-scale portrait project André Kertész, 144 Views (1980), which, according to Maggs, Kertész described as a “portrait mosaic”.