FERROPATHIE

Date . . 1928
Place . . Medudon, a suburb of Paris.
Photographer . . Andre Kertez

Blog # 24

Ferropathie. . . Or as you say, train spotting. My obsession, my fixation. Akin for some to school detention lines, absurd repetitive and a complete waste of time. For me it’s what I do and what I am, a Ferropathie. Those endless list of train numbers studiously entered into well used pocket notebooks, it’s not who I am. Numbers so tiresome, so monotonous, so anorak. Me, I’m a le blazer person, not always the best protection for the weather but symbolic. It defines me as a sophisticated Ferropathie, maybe even débonnaire.

I spot locomotives, not numbers, mechanical wonders, powerful beast, alive and breathing and that sweet, sweet smell; fire, burning coal, smoke, soot, never to be forgotten.

Look out for ; a Baldwin 2-C-2 a genuine Puffing Billy ; a Du Bousquet, a curious articulated beast; a Petiet 2, the tourists favourite ; a Prussian P8 from Germany, received as reparations after the First World War ; a rare Fowler Class A, known in the UK as a Duck Sixes, a nickname derived from the wheel arrangement; and the transcendent, powerful Wurttemburg C with it strange small wheels. And more and more. Now that’s what I call locomotives. Big, enigmatic and vaporous.

Train spotting is a misnomer, you don’t spot one of these beauties, you behold it, you honour it. More of a performance than an observation, an encounter, often brief, rapid, an impression.

My notebook is full of words, names not numbers. Specifics, details and technicalities, for which I have the greatest of respect, you might even say esteem !

The devil, no, the wonder, is in the detail.

Passing by in seconds ; steam regulators, Johnson bars, throttle levers, sand domes, smoke boxes, tread plates, superheater tubes, coal bunkers , the extraordinary Bissell Truck and don’t forget the fire boxes, red hot, the beating heart of the locomotive.

It doesn’t stop there. As I said locomotives are me, so inevitably I surround myself with them. This can be problematic in a small Parisian apartment, consequently the full size monster has to be replaced with images, photographs, drawings, paintings.

Open my apartment door and you will see, behold my collection. Every wall space, every centimetre of floor and each and every shelf, full, full of locomotive memorabilia from timetables to rare UK Hornby 00 gauge models. See also the dust accumulating on every surface of each artefact; I leave it, for dust seems to harmonise with the idea of a locomotive being begrimed and smouldering. For me it’s get your hands dirty, the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts, the blackened heart of the matter.

Even as I sit here outside the Le Petite café, Monsieur Cortès is arriving with a very special painting of a Wurttemburg C for me. His paintings are so meticulous, every detail precise. I need to see this precision to feel the grandeur of a locomotive, a Napoleon of Steam in a painting. Monsieur Cortès is beginning to get a name for himself for his depiction of the streets of Paris so I was especially pleased that he was willing to create a painting of the Wittenberg C just for me. Unusually the painting is wrapped in newspaper, perhaps disguising it’s true worth in this shabby and precarious neighbourhood.

I know you’re wondering how I can practice my Ferropathie while reposing alongside La petite Café, a second café au lait at the ready and a madeleine half finished. Would I rather jostle amongst the crowd at the Guarde de Nord, unable to settle in one spot and drink that Americano! Here I can see perfectly the train. I see the locomotive. I realise the details. My notebook at the ready on the Table en Verre. I could, I suppose, stand in the doorway of that rundown epicene down the hill, amongst the smell of cabbages and Époisses cheese. Unpalatable, besides the coveted train and locomotive would be all but hidden behind the parapet. Give me the Petit Café and the madeleine any day.

Waouh, just as Monsieur Cortès is arriving a Prussian P8 glides so majestically across the viaduct. Full steam, full power, energy and might, a sight indeed.

What more could a Ferropathie ask for.

Monsieur Cortès and I exchange glances, realising the magnificence of the moment.

Andre Kertesz • Hungarian • 1894 – 1985 • Yet another photographer known as the father of street photography. Just how many founding parents do we need? No, What makes Kertesz special, maybe even unique, was his knowledge and friendship of Mondrian, Chagal, the Dadaists and the Surrealist. From 1925 to 1936 Kertesz lived and worked in Paris, the artistic centre of Europe, amongst the vibrant artistic community of the French capital. Kertész was a pioneer of ‘spontaneous’ imagery, the chance encounter, known for his innovative visual language, playful humour and the suggestion of the absurd within Surrealism.

His images are of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary. Images where lives and actions converge in a moment trapped in time. The detail is often familiar, however, Kertesz, armed with a new lightweight Leica camera, created images that are both prosaic and yet puzzling, straightforward and yet questioning. The elements of astonishing stories conjured out of the commonplace.

I came across a painting recently that seemed to cement Keretsz outlook firmly within Surrealism.

Italia, Piazza Tower • 1913 • Giorgio de Chirico

The arches, the train, the central figure, the sense of a strange juxtaposition. This is maybe how Keretsz saw the world around him, saw the streets of Paris.

Surrealism seemed to develop within Kertesz’s photographic work, becoming a growing influence and seeming to take over his sensibility. In 1933 Kertesz took to a studio armed with three mirrors, lights, a large format camera and two models. His head full of the practicalities of Surrealism.

Distortion # 60 • 1933

Keretsz produced over 200 Distortions. An imaginative use of the mirrors, the lights, and the models. He created eye-catching images. He was very pleased with the results and included them in a number of his photographic books and exhibitions.

For me the Distortions, as photographs, seem empty. Empty of depth, empty of meaning and empty of narration. Surrealism and nothing else. Work so different, a definitive break with his past practice and seemingly out of character.

Fortunately, for me, stories and meaning resumed their rightful place in his work. The Surrealism now playing a more authentic purpose within his photography.

Chez Mondrian Paris • 1926

Lost Cloud New York • 1937

The photographs of Andre Keretsz are all over the Internet but here’s a link

to the official site for a starting point . . . . . . . www.andrekertesz.org