In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style prevented his work from gaining wider recognition.

Due to German persecution of the Jews and the threat of World War II, Kertész decided to emigrate to the United States in 1936, where he had to rebuild his reputation through commissioned work.

[1][2][4][5] Hoffman paid for his middle nephew's business classes at the Academy of Commerce until his 1912 graduation, and arranged his hiring by the stock exchange soon after.

[5] Unlike his older brother Imre, who worked at the exchange in Budapest for all his life, Kertész had little interest in the field.

In his free time, he photographed the local peasants, Romani people, and landscape of the surrounding Hungarian Plains (the puszta).

[5] On its 26 June 1925, the Hungarian news magazine Érdekes Újság used one of his photographs for its cover, giving him widespread publicity.

[6] Kertész emigrated to Paris in September 1925, leaving behind his mother, his unofficial fiancée Elizabeth, both brothers, and his uncle Hoffman, who died shortly afterward.

Kertész was among numerous Hungarian artists, including François Kollar, Robert Capa, Emeric Fehér, Brassaï, and Julia Bathory.

[2][5][6] In 1932 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, the price of Kertész's proofs was set at US$20 ($ 447 in 2025), a large sum of money during the Great Depression.

He created photo portraits of painters Piet Mondrian[7] and Marc Chagall, the writer Colette,[2] and film-maker Sergei Eisenstein.

[6] In 1933 Kertész published his first personal book of photographs, Enfants, dedicated to his fiancée Elizabeth and his mother, who had died that year.

[1][4] In the late 1920s, Kertész secretly married the French portrait photographer Rosza Klein (she used the name Rogi André).

With his commissioned work dropping and persecution of Jews increasing, Kertész and Elizabeth decided to move to New York.

Soon after his arrival, Kertész approached Beaumont Newhall, director of the photographic department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), who was preparing a show entitled Photography 1839–1937.

[4][6] On 25 October 1938, Look printed a series of Kertész photographs, entitled A Fireman Goes to School; but credited them mistakenly to Ernie Prince, his former boss.

He had contributed to more than 30 commissioned photo essays and articles in both Vogue and House and Garden, but was omitted from the list of featured photographers.

In 1941, the Kertész couple were designated as enemy aliens because of World War II (Hungary was fighting on the side of the Axis powers).

[5] Trying to avoid trouble because Elizabeth had started a cosmetics company (Cosmia Laboratories), Kertész ceased to do commissioned work and essentially disappeared from the photographic world for three years.

In addition, in June 1944 László Moholy-Nagy, director of the New Bauhaus – American School of Design offered him a position teaching photography.

With his wife's cosmetic business booming, Kertész agreed in 1946 to a long-term, exclusive contract with House and Garden.

[1][6] Kertész worked in the settings of many famous homes and notable places, as well as overseas, where he traveled again in England, Budapest and Paris, renewing friendships and making new ones.

Despite the success of the Chicago show, Kertész did not gain another exhibit until 1962, when his photographs were shown at Long Island University.

[8][10][11] Toward the end of 1961, Kertész broke his contract to Condé Nast Publishing after a minor dispute, and started doing his own work again.

In 1962 his work was exhibited in Venice; in 1963, he was one of the invited artists of the IV Mostra Biennale Internazionale della Fotografia there and he was awarded a gold medal for his dedication to the photographic industry.

In 1964, soon after John Szarkowski became the photography director at the Museum of Modern Art, he featured Kertész in a solo show.

Still growing in fame, Kertész was granted the National Grand Prize of Photography in Paris in 1982, as well as the 21st Annual George Washington Award from the American Hungarian Foundation the same year.

Though Kertész received numerous awards for photography, he never felt both his style and work was accepted by critics and art audiences alike.

[17] He was never considered to "comment" on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life.

With his art's intimate feeling and nostalgic tone,[15] Kertész's images alluded to a sense of timelessness which was inevitably only recognised after his death.

[4] Although Kertész rarely received bad reviews, it was the lack of commentary that led to the photographer feeling distant from recognition.