An eye for reading those who read

Portland show celebrates reissue of Kertesz's book

A traveling exhibit features Andre Kertesz photos from ''On Reading'' and additional work. Above: ''Carnival, Paris, 1926.'' (photos courtesy of andre kertesz's estate)

PORTLAND, Maine - Reading is such a common act we hardly take notice when anyone does it. How common? Well, you're doing it right now. Andre Kertesz noticed readers, though. He had a major knack for noticing, as one might expect from a photographer who numbers among the very greatest in the history of the medium.

One way to describe reading is as a more active form of noticing. Gifted noticer that he was, Kertesz cherished reading no less than photography. It also helped that his father was a bookseller. In 1971, Kertesz merged page and picture-taking in a small book called "On Reading." It consisted of 66 photographs he took between 1915 and 1970 showing the written word being examined - mostly, although not exclusively, by people. "Examined," for example, may not be quite the right verb for the activity taking place in "New York (bug and book)."

W.W. Norton has just published a handsome new edition of "On Reading." In conjunction with its publication, there's a traveling exhibition of the book's contents, "Andre Kertesz: On Reading," augmented by some two dozen additional reading photographs. It runs at the Portland Museum of Art through Nov. 16.

Catching readers in the act would seem relatively easy to do, and it is. Few private activities are so often done in public. Yet it's quite another to catch them in such a way that seeing nearly a hundred versions of that act can still sustain our interest. While the possibilities for reading are hugely various, the activity itself isn't. Nor do the attributes of reading - introspection, absorption, solitariness - present much in the way of visual possibilities. It becomes crucial to vary the basic motif.

Fortunately, reading is nearly as universal an activity as eating, breathing, or sleeping. So Kertesz has a vast cast to draw on: students, commuters, bookstall browsers, a Hasid, a nun, priests, young and old, those distracted and those engrossed. What they read is nearly as diverse as they are: primarily books, but also newspapers, magazines, notebooks, letters. Kertesz, who died in 1985, shows us no computer screens, though.

A paradox lies at the heart of reading: The act itself rests at the intersection of location and imagination. A reader exists at a specific point in exterior space - library, classroom, park bench - but the activity takes him or her to another, interior space. Kertesz can't really show us that interior space (though some of the expressions we see on readers' faces can be read as clearly as a map). So he compensates with a multitude of locales: Paris, New York, Venice, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Budapest, and not a few points between.

The danger with travelogue is that setting can become a distraction and décor supersede event and emotion. Kertesz avoids this, of course. With the restraint and delicacy that mark all his work, he never gives in to any picture-postcard imperative. Also, while humor marks many of these images, Kertesz never has fun at the expense of his subjects. In art, no less than in life, affection and wit are a rare combination. They're not rare for Kertesz, and a genuine tenderness contributes no small amount to the exhibition's almost-preposterous charm.

Not that Kertesz is unwilling to indulge in excess where appropriate. The man was Hungarian, after all. In "Paris (cow stalls and man reading newspaper on bench)" we see a Frenchman who looks very French indeed, right down to beret and headwaiter mustache. He hunches over a newspaper. Hunching over him is a cow, who eyeballs the headlines, too. Kertesz was surely familiar with the popular brand of cheese La Vache Qui Rit (the laughing cow). The cow shown here may or may not laugh, but it would certainly seem to be La Vache Qui Lit (the reading cow). Kertesz, bless him, milks the image for all it's worth.

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.