A commission in 1933 to produce a series of nudes for the
risqué men’s magazine Le Sourire (The
Smile) prompted André Kertész to create an uncharacteristically humorous and
dreamlike series, known as Distortions or
Deformations. In more than 200
photographs made in the course of a month, Kertész recorded his models
reflected in funhouse mirrors borrowed from a Parisian amusement park. Although
Kertész was never officially part of their movement, these nudes tap into the hallucinatory
and sexual realms so dear to Surrealist artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Salvador
Dalí.