The mirror of the self

One feels that in the Parisian environment of Kertesz’s time, people are grappling with real problems: a lost limb, no work, too little food. The stressed and hopeless people in the not-nurturing motel or in the empty shopping mall of more recent times — they are not suffering from a real problem, more from a lack of engagement, a loss of connection to the earth, to their fellow creatures, even to themselves.

Life in that Paris is rough. It is hard. But it does not impose the lethal disembodiment of the human being, which the pictures on the previous pages portray, and which those buildings implement.

#book/The Nature of Order/1 The Phenomenon of Life/10 The impact of living structure on human life#