Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/André Kertész

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 01:32, 14 October 2007.

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André Kertész

Hi all! This really is my pet project and I finally feel this article is ready to stand up for FAC. I recently began working on the André Kertész article in early August and have expanded it a great deal since then, adding around 300 edits since then and hoping to add more [1]. I got a few books from the library and began working. As you'll see, the article:

• Is 100% referenced.
• Has pictures (The only free use ones I could find so far relating to the subject).
• Is very comprehensive.
• Is well prosed.
• Is NPOV.

I feel I've done pretty much all I can do to the article. Any constructive critism is welcome, but hopefully the article is good enough to make FA status. I'm going to go out and search for more references (You can never have enough!) just to double reference everything. Anyway, go see the article for yourself - I've tried my hardest, but now it's up to you! :) Cheers, Spawn Man 07:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comments - I haven't had a chance to start reading but given he's a photographer it would be great to get some photos - some of his early work would be over 75 years old and hence out of copyright (?). cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:45, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Another thing - reading the article I don't get a sense why his work was so outstanding (I do in parts but could it be elaborated upon some more?)

I really couldn't answer that - why do people like a certain artist? I didn't want to go on about how great his photographs were because it may have sounded too POV, but if I could get some of his photographs, maybe that would help the reader. The problem is that, sure, some of his photos were prior to 75 years ago, but weren't in America, so would that licence still count to them? I guess I could still use a low resolution picture to illustrate one of his works, but again, there may be opposes for using a fair use image in the article. I'm at a loss and not great with image licences at the best of times. Anyway, thanks for the copyediting! Hopefully we can think of something... :) Spawn Man 01:10, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. This is my favorite photographer, so I'd love to see this article featured.  :) I work with images a lot, so I'll see what I can do to track down any photos out of copyright. However, there really need to be page references for all the book citations--this almost certainly can't be featured without them. Calliopejen1 04:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for the offer of help Callio! He's my favourite too. However, I must say that I've never had to put in page number into citations before. Most of the information is taken from all over the books and the main book which I used I had to return. To pinpoint down and reset all the references could take me forever and I don't see how this would affect the article's chances. I thought if it was from the book, unless you really wanted to pinpoint it down for the reader, it was not an absolute must. Does anyone else known about this? Spawn Man 04:40, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry dude - I've done it for my last few FAs - I think chapters would be a good compromise if that was possible (I should have given you the heads up earlier....) Not sure how strongly other folk feel - not seen it hugely debated on FAC though. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• For free images, basically what we need, US or abroad, is images that were published (not just taken or exhibited) before 1923. Hungary's copyright laws don't help us out because they aren't any more liberal than the US's (see here, 70 years after the death of the author for artistic photographs). Since it doesn't look like he was very successful during his early career, I'm not sure how many published pre-1923 images there are... I think that our best bets are the self-portrait for a competition in the magazine Borsszem Janko (assuming it was published in the magazine before 1923) and whatever was published in Erdekes Ujsag in 1917. Do you have these images in your library books? Calliopejen1 05:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
• Also, there is a problem with the copyright status of the main image, which says both PD and copyright. I just tracked down the photographer on google and sent him an email to ask for clarification. (He hasn't contributed anything to wikipedia since 2005 so I didn't think his talk page was a good option.) Hopefully he responds! Calliopejen1 05:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Okay, for the reference thing I'll see what I can do - For the references from the book "André Kertész: Diary of Light 1912–1985", everything is from the "Chronology" chapter from pages 198-206 and is the same with the book "André Kertész: A Lifetime of Photography", where everything is taken from the Chronology chapter from pages 9-11. The references from the book "Leica: Witness To A Century" come only from pages 54-55. I no longer have access to the book "André Kertész: His Life and Work" and it just simply isn't possible to tell you what exact pages or chapters I got my references from in regard to "André Kertész: Of Paris and New York" - the book goes back and forth through time and I went back and forth while writing the info into the article. All I know is that the references from that book come from pages 7-124 and the exhibitions references from page 258. If someone can tell me if this is at all any help and how to implement it if it is, it would be appreciated. In regard to the photographs; no, the books do not have when they were published, only tentative dates as to when they were taken. I think the war photographs he took were published in the magazine because the subject of the magazine article was of the war, but I'm only guessing. If any of this has helped, please let me know here - I think I might have some hard work set out... gulp... Spawn Man 08:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment; I removed the listing from WP:GAC; please read the instructions at WP:FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Musta missed that one - I nominated it at GA first, but when it didn't get reviewed, I nominated it here later while I still had the references. Sorry for the violation. :) Spawn Man 07:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Great article. However I have a question. I'm not knowledgeable about the style used concerning this issue but I find that mentioning Kertesz's religion in the lead "was a Hungarian-born, Jewish photographer" is as odd as reading Elvis Presley is a christian rock'n'roll singer or Mohamed ElBaradei is the muslim Director General of the IAEA. Since he wasn't a Zionist leader or something like this and his religion didn't have a great impact on his career.. Your opinion is appreciated. Thank you. CG 14:07, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

CG thanks for your input - I didn't write the lead but helped the main contributor out a bit; from various bio articles I've seen, a fair proportion indicate a person's religion with not a similar level of relevance (eg Barbara Bach or Beastie Boys, which I've was been looking at). I am not sure of the rules on this. It may have had a bearing on why he left Paris for New York in this case but concede I don't know the subject matter well enough to comment otherwise. Spawny may have something further to add. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind cutting it out if it's a problem; I just thought it ran off the toungue better than having a sentence of "And he was Jewish" down the line. I think I'll wait for better consensus, but it'll be noted down. Thanks for the comments. Spawn Man 07:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to have dropped out entirely; while it need not be in the first sentence, it should be somewhere outside the infobox; any European after 1933 would find Jewishness had a significant impact on his life. To class him as Jewish by religion implies he practiced Judaism; is there a source for this? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• Note - I've now added a couple more citations - hopefully this helps. :) Thanks, Spawn Man 04:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support - over the line. Would be great to get a photograph or two given the subject matter but if we can't we can't and the best effort has been done otherwise. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the support! I'm unsure of the copyright status of his photographs as of yet, but seeing as it's near impossible to get any pieces from his earliest days, I doubt there'll be any pics any time soon. Calliopejen1 did say he was looking into things above, so maybe we can get something from him. I've left him a message. Cheers, Spawn Man 11:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Reluctant oppose. I appreciate the work that's been done on the references, but I think you really need page number pincites for a featured article, or else as a practical matter it's hard to verify its content. The Harvard library has the books used so if I have some free time i might try to track down some page numbers but it's not going to be possible during the life of this FA nomination. Also, the author of the photo never replied, but it looks as though he uploaded it in 2005 with both a copyright sign and a "copyright / free use" tag, which has since been replaced everywhere with the PD sign, presumably because it is the exact same thing in practice. (If you release all rights to your photo, it's not really copyrighted anymore.) I will clean up the image description to indicate this. Also, even if there are no free photos by him that we can find, I think a limited number of nonfree images would be acceptable under wikipedia's nonfree content criteria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calliopejen1 (talk • contribs) 21:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Reply - Ummm, I have added page numbers to the citations, as mentioned in the thread above. Not sure if that's what you mean, but I've been over it with a copyeditor and he says what I did was correct. Spawn Man 05:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Not really.... About 20 citations are listed for a book where a 100-page range is given, and 20 more are for a book with no page numbers at all. What you did is the best for now, but I really don't think this should be FA until there are page numbers. Without them, it's basically impossible to verify that what the article says is correct. Calliopejen1 23:58, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

So you're calling me a liar? Why would I write down untrue facts? You should have brought this up before I gave the freakin' books back. I can't possibly fix this now for at least a month or two. Besides, all the statements sourced with those couple of books which don't have page numbers or a large range of numbers are also cited with ones that are. For example, one statement is cited by a book without a page number and by one with page numbers - surely that is acceptable considering I can't get the books out for ages now. This is all very stressful and frankly, I told you that I couldn't give page numbers since I gave the books back ages ago. This is my pet project, and I'd hate to have it fall short simply because two of the references don't give page numbers, despite the fact they're backed up by one which do. I think I can remember the chapter names - Would that do instead of page numbers in regard to the books with a large range or no page numbers? Or I could simply remove them from the inline citations and put them in general references. I don't see the problem really Callio, seeing that even if I didn't remove those references, the article would still be 100% cited, so I don't see the problem with leaving two citations alongside ones which do have page numbers. Spawn Man 00:35, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Simmer down, don't take this so personally! :) (I never called you a liar.) You never pointed out that all the un-numbered ones were double-sourced so I was only looking at the progress in the references section without knowing that they were double-sourced in the article text. As of now I think there's like two statements that aren't sourced to any pages, but I don't think that's an issue. However, I can't throw my full support behind the article without a copyedit (I'll try to work through it) and maybe the inclusion of a couple particularly relevant (nonfree) images to show his style. I haven't read it through thoroughly (I was waiting for the page #s, which were a deal-breaker) so I can't say if there are any more issues. Calliopejen1 00:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry man. I lost my cool a bit - I've just spent so much time on it and I've been trying to get a non-dinosaur FA for ages; I tried two times with Jewellery and eventually gave up (It's now a mess after I've abondoned it), and I thought I could do it with Kertesz. So yeah, I apologise for my reaction. On another note, I can get non-free images sure thing; I was just hesitant to use fair use images on a FA, but sicne it's requested, I guess I'll ahve to. As for the copyediting - Circeus rewrote the whole thing, and I'm quite amazed at the job he's done. Then Cas Liber rewrote a bit too. If you want to triple check, that's fine, but IMHO I think that all it needs now is the pictures. I'll get right on it. Question: What licence should I use? Cheers, Spawn Man 00:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Another major problem that will keep me from supporting if not added: there is no art criticism of Kertesz's work included. Kertesz is a major photographer and I imagine there should be no shortage of journal articles on the topic. An artist FA should have content discussing his style (there's very little in the article as it stands) and content from critics as well as biographers. Calliopejen1 20:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)`

There's many references as to why his work was important throughout the article. Kertesz wasn't one of those huge media artists which gathered crowds to his exhibitions all the time; I wouldn't know where to start without sounding POV. As I've already said, I've given the books back, there's no way to remedy things until much later, probably after the FAC. This isn't such a big deal in my opinion, as there's lots of material in the article text which says how he was received by the critics, how other artists thought of him and sourced statements saying he's a seminal figure in photography. That sounds like a fair desciption page to me, but if you can give the ground work or a starting point, I'll go and do it. I've not done an artist FA before, so I need a bit of help, though I doubt I'll receive it from you because you hardly reply to my posts. Anyway, thanks for your input. Spawn Man 00:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's tricky - I've typed in "André Kertész" + criticism or critique but nothing is jumping out. Funny how more completely some subjects are covered than others...cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Some relevant sources (I may add these later): Calliopejen1 16:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

• Ken Johnson, "Unmasking A Chameleon Of the Lens," NYT February 25, 2005
• Andy Grundberg, "PHOTOGRAPHY VIEW; REVISITING A MODERNIST PIONEER AND A POET OF URBAN LIFE" NYT January 5, 1986
• Andy Grundberg, "PHOTOGRAPHY VIEW; MODERN MASTERS AND VIEWS OF WAR HELD CENTER STAGE" NYT December 29, 1985
• Gene Thornton, "KERTESZ: THE GREAT DEMOCRAT OF MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY" NYT July 22, 1984
• Monteiro, Stephen, "Andre Kertesz: Maison Europeenne de la Photographie" ARTnews v. 106 no. 5 (May 2007) p. 169
• Weil, Rex. "Andre Kertesz: National Gallery of Art," ARTnews v. 104 no. 4 (April 2005) p. 133
• Goldberg, Vickie. "Too Human," Art On Paper v. 9 no. 4 (March/April 2005) p. 68-72
• Vince Aletti, "The Photographer-Poet," Art & Auction v. 27 no. 6 (February 2005) p. 110-15
• Wild, David. "The modernist eye," Architects' Journal v. 209 no. 12 (March 25 1999) p. 54
• Hamilton, Peter. "The mighty Magyar," British Journal of Photography v. 142 (November 15 1995) p. 14-15
• Bowman, Edward, "Kertesz--reality and distortion" The Photographic Journal v. 135 (September 1995) p. 326+
• Berna-Heath, Diane. "Snap decisions: Andre Kertesz, a centennial tribute." Southwest Art v. 24 (August 1994) p. 32+
• Hambourg, Maria Morris. "Photography between the wars" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin v. 45 (Spring 1988) p. 3-56
• Plachy, Sylvia. "Hungary by heart" Artforum International v. 24 (February 1986) p. 90-6
• Obituary, Afterimage v. 13 (November 1985) p. 2
• Obituary, Art Direction v. 37 (November 1985) p. 128
• Obituary, Art in America v. 73 (November 1985) p. 190
• Gross, Jozef. Obituary, British Journal of Photography v. 132 (October 25 1985) p. 1195-6
• Gross, Jozef. "Exposure," British Journal of Photography v. 131 (August 3 1984) p. 812-13
• Gross, Jozef. "Andre Kertesz: a 90th birthday tribute." British Journal of Photography v. 131 (August 3 1984) p. 800-3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calliopejen1 (talk • contribs) 16:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Well done on the finds...we'll have to find some of them and source....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:23, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• Fixes needed, pls review capitalization of the word "Period" in section headings per WP:MSH. No punctuation on sentence fragments on image captions (see WP:MOS#Captions). See WP:MOSNUM regarding spelling out numbers less than 10 ( ... would be returned to him within 6 months ... ) Use endashes rather than hyphens in Bibliography and Exhibitions (see WP:DASH). Separate page ranges in References with endashes rather than hyphens. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Everything is done except the endashes, which I'm not sure how to format. Could you give me an example of how to put one in the article here or something? Or is there a button on the keyboard which has it because I'm pretty sure I solely used the dash at the top of the keyboard. ? Spawn Man 05:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
    • There are a couple of ways you can do en and emdashes. When you're in the edit mode on any Wiki page, below the edit window is a bold line that says Do not copy text ... Below that is a line that starts with Insert:, and the first dash there is an endash, second is an emdash. You can insert them from there. On my browser, I can also insert them with alt-numeric keypad (0150 for endash, 0150 for emdash). I think the key combos may be different on different browsers, but should be explained at WP:DASH. Pls ping me if you still need help. By the way, I think you may have removed punctuation on some full sentences in image captions; only sentence fragments are not punctuated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
      • Your bidding is my command my lady - All done. :) Spawn Man 02:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
        • Finished, and struck. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
      • Aw, no support? Such a tease... ;) Thanks Sandy. :) Spawn Man 03:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. The article does not address Kertesz's art in any substantial way. We get blanket statements like "he is now considered one of the seminal figures of photojournalism and photo essay and if not photography as a whole" but no explanation by art historians about what makes his photography special and why he is so important. (Or even really what his typical photos look like.) I provided a very long list of articles that are likely to address just this, but they have not been incorporated into the article. Calliopejen1 20:51, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I thought you were going to do that? I don't have access to those articles! Grr, you leave everything to the last minute Callio! I asked what you were looking for, but you didn't reply. Saying you need artistic critique is not good enough for me to embark on what you wish - It's not easy writing about how anyone is so great without sounding POV. As I said before, can you please provide me with an example so I may begin - I really have no idea what you want; I'm new to the art FAC world, so a little cooperation would be great! Cheers, Spawn Man 06:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
    • I said I might, but I got busy with other things.... And I gave you what I was looking for, namely critical assessments of Kertesz to incorporate. You should at least be able to access the several NYT articles online since TimesSelect ended last week, which would be a good start for now. The others aren't online even for me, and I'm not going to go find them in our art library all the way across campus... I would see what you can do with the NYT articles to start. I don't think it should be too hard to present an objective picture of what critics say about an artist. I think this quote from the NYT is a good model:

    • What distinguishes Kertesz's work is not a particular visual style or signature subject matter, but its emotional resonance. Undoubtedly Kertesz was a great formalist, but in his most persuasive pictures, form is put to the service of feeling. In their catalog introduction, Ms. Greenough and Mr. Gurbo get this just right. Kertesz, they write, sought "not the decisive moment when an external action completed an intriguing formal arrangement, but the instant when the world was infused with personal meaning."

    • I worked a little on the Fernando Amorsolo article, which I think isn't the best but you can see how it covers his style and criticism of him. I'm not sure what the best organizational strategy would be. Calliopejen1 08:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've added something, can you check it out? Cheers, Spawn Man 09:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

• Note to closing admin - Calliopejen1 is on Wikipedia at varient times and as such, may not respond quickly to replies or questions - therefore, would you consider waiting until after all discussion is halted before closing this FAC? I'm sure I've completeed what has been asked of me, but in case I haven't, a day or two might be needed to fix any problems and then another one or two days may be needed for Callio to reply; so if you could just make sure everything's done, it'd be a lot easier. Anyway, thanks admin, whoever you are (I presume Raul, but maybe not...). Cheers, Spawn Man 08:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Neutral. Hopefully this was quick enough for you... :) The article is very comprehensive and well-referenced, but I don't think the coverage of his work is quite as good as it could be, and I don't find the writing to be totally FA-quality (no specific objections exactly, but just overall). It's a good article, but I'm not sure it's FA material quite yet. Calliopejen1 22:24, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply' - Yep, super-fast! ;) Thanks for the neutral, but I'd have to disagree with the writing element of your rationale - the article has been rewritten by top class copyeditors who almost solely work on rewriting FAs. If you could give me the areas to clean up, it'd be great. Also, what areas can I work on for the coverage of his work? I used your example given above as a template and sourced the new section. However, if it's just the general feeling (That's a little unfair though....), there's not much I can do. Any suggestions are welcome, but for now I feel it's an inactionable vote - I'd love your support in any case. Cheers Callio! :) Spawn Man 05:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Looks good. But the article does not mention why he is in Category:Beekeepers. I also echo the above request for more illustrative descriptions on why he was considered so good. --maclean 19:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the support! Hmm, the bee keepers thing was added by an IP I think due to a reference that Kertesz was a beekeeper at one point in his life - I didn't know whether to keep or biff it, so I thought I'd leave it - things like that usually get decided by community consensus on the main page when the article get's there, or if you want it gone, that's consensus enough for me as it does sound a bit strange. :) As for the "why he was so good" - as I said above, I was a bit hesitant of making a section on why he was so good (Why is anything good? It depends per person...) as it may sound kinda POV. As it is, I tried my hardest and presented the facts and a general description of what reviewers and people thought of him (IE, the unknown soldier etc...). I'm sure someone more bold than I will certainly expand on why he was so good when the article chugs along, but I don't feel that something small and that could potentially be taken as POV was worth the hassle when why something is good varies from person to person. In any case, thanks for your much needed support! :) :) (Double smiley). Cheers, Spawn Man 04:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Aw, c'mon. How long is this FAC gonna take - the tension is killing me! Spawn Man 04:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no way that an article which has the wrong sort keys in the DEFAULTSORT magic word should ever become a featured article without that being fixed. Gene Nygaard 20:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
  • This sounds easy to fix, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean (I did all the cats by hand and someone else put that default sort in - could you give me a clear idea of what I have to do since I didn't quite understand your oppose. I'll be happy to fix it. :) Thanks, Spawn Man 00:52, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Never mind that - I think I've fixed it? Why didn't you say the accents needed to be removed from the default sort? It woulda been a bit better phrased, but still, thanks for pointing it out. It'd be great if you could revise your !vote based on the fact I've fixed the problem now; unless of course I haven't fully fixed it...? Anyway, thanks again for your comments; they've made the article look better for it. Spawn Man 01:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Got an edit conflict when I was explaining it here, glad you figured it out. Our rudimentary sorting mechanism only goes by Unicode numbers, not by anybody's sorting rules. I'll strike the oppose. Gene Nygaard 01:07, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! :) :) (Double smiley). :) (Oops, make that a triple.) Cheers, Spawn Man 01:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

• For the love of God comment! - Can someone please close the FAC? It's nearing 2 months - The tension! The tension! Argh! My heart..... *Death*.... Spawn Man 03:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Honestly.... *Sigh*... Spawn Man 06:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.