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The “Disortions” series has gained a central position within the history of photography.  In March 1933 Kertész for the first time published several images from the “distortion” series in the French humor magazine Le Sourire. They were printed with a text by the relatively unknown writer A. P. Barancy with the title “Fenêtre ouverte sur l’audela” (window open to (on) the other side), a title meant to reflect the uncertainty we as spectators experience when an object, or in this case – a body — is extracted from the surroundings in which we are used to see it and adopts forms that distort its natural proportions. The reality we meet is, in other words, “surreal.” Later that same year, in September 1933, Kertész published another five of the pictures under the headline “Kertész et Son Miroir” in the periodical Arts et Métiers Graphiques (listed here). 

The book presents the restoration of Kertész's avant garde images from glass-plate negatives. The images were originally exhibited in the early 1930s and then the negatives were left in storage, to be found and printed four decades later. 

 

The 1976 showing caused a controversy in New York for the usual reasons involving prudes and politicians. These pictures are reminiscent of fun-house mirror images, but they actually grew out of Kertész's very early impressions of swimmers' bodies moving through water.