Nostalgia in Black and White

Today I went to an exhibition in Amsterdam's Foam Musuem - a beautiful and sprawling retrospective of André Kertész's work from his start in Hungary to his final years in NYC. 

Old black and white photographs are my favourite art, and yet make me unendingly pessimistic about our current moment and my place in time. I’m fully aware that had I lived in these times - as a non-straight non-man - I'd probably not have had much fun. But it takes only one photograph like the above, or anything by Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Vivian Maier and especially André Kertész to fill me with a yearning for a different time and a real resentment of mine.