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This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Writer and art historian Patricia Albers discusses her book "Everything is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész," the first full biography of the innovative “father of modern photography.”

About the Book (from the publisher):
Born in Budapest in 1894, André Kertész soared to star status in Jazz Age Paris, tumbled into poverty and obscurity in wartime New York, slogged through 15 years shooting for House & Garden, then improbably reemerged into the spotlight with a 1964 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. By the time of his death in 1985, he had exhibited around the world, taken more than 100,000 images, and steered the medium in new and vital directions: He was the first major photographer to embrace the Leica, the camera now mythically linked to street photography, and he pioneered subjective photojournalism, publishing what is arguably the world’s first great photo essay.

Drawing on dozens of interviews, previous scholarship, and deep archival research, and interrogating the images themselves, Patricia Albers retrieves aspects of Kertész’s life that he and his pictures gloss over, among them the ordeals of trench warfare, the impact of the Holocaust, and the tale of his tangled romances. She takes Kertész from the Eastern front in World War I to the Paris of Piet Mondrian, Colette, Alexander Calder, and a lively central European diaspora. From Condé Nast’s postwar media empire to the “photo boom” of the 1970s. She revisits Kertész’s relationships with other photographers, among them his “frenemy” Brassaï and protégé Robert Capa. She breathes life into a gentle, generous, and unassuming man endowed with Old-World charm but also sputtering with grievance and rage and inclined to indulge in deception.

"Everything Is Photograph" immerses readers in the heyday of a now lost version of photography. Formally vigorous, emotionally rich, and aesthetically charged, Kertész’s images speak of the medium as a tool for human connection, self-narration, self-invention, and inquiry about the world, even as they project its mysteries.

About the Author:
Patricia Albers is a California-based writer, editor, and art historian. She is the author of "Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life," the acclaimed first biography of the abstract painter. Her previous books include "Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti" and "Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance." Albers’s essays, art reviews, and features have appeared in numerous museum catalogs and publications, including SquareCylinder, San Francisco Magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, and the New York Times. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a juror for the Biographers International Plutarch Award.

This event was recorded on May 06, 2026.

Library staff members read a poem every day during April to mark National Poetry Month.

Martha shares "Sky--" and "Dear Bubble-That-Was" from the book Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Melissa Sweet.

Library staff members read a poem every day during April to mark National Poetry Month.

Yun-Yi shares "Patchwork Pigeons" from the book Outside Your Window by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Mark Hearld.

Library staff members read a poem every day during April to mark National Poetry Month.

Marissa shares "The Mutt" from the book Best in Show by David Elliott and various illustrators.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky presents and discusses "Robert Pinsky: The First Two Books of Poems" and "On Poetry, Democracy, and Culture" with Eliza Griswold.

Eric Crahan at Princeton University Press, Editor in Chief for Humanities and Social Sciences, introduced Robert Pinsky and Eliza Griswold.

About "Robert Pinsky: The First Two Books of Poems:"
Award-winning poet Robert Pinsky’s first two collections—"Sadness And Happiness" and "An Explanation of America"—announced the arrival of a major new voice in American poetry. Now, these acclaimed books are presented together in a single volume featuring a new preface by the author, introducing a new generation of readers to the groundbreaking early work of a beloved poet. "Sadness And Happiness" explores everyday subjects such as the streets and oceanfront of Pinsky’s hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey, while the long title poem of "An Explanation of America" examines personal and national myths as it transports readers across the country.

About "On Poetry, Democracy, and Culture:"
For Robert Pinsky, poetry’s individual, human scale as a fundamentally vocal medium—with poems brought to life by one person at a time—gives poetry a unique importance in American and democratic culture and society. This book brings together two compelling works of criticism by the former poet laureate—"The Situation of Poetry" and "Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry," in which he makes a passionate and eloquent case for the vital role of poetry in a democracy.

About the Author:
Robert Pinsky is an award-winning American poet, essayist, and translator. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He served for three terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate, during which time he founded the Favorite Poem Project. His many books include "On Poetry, Culture, and Democracy" (Princeton), the memoir "Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet," and the poetry collections "Proverbs of Limbo, At the Foundling Hospital, and Selected Poems." His bestselling translation of Dante’s "Inferno" won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Among his other awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. He is distinguished professor emeritus of English and creative writing at Boston University.

In Conversation:
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, translator, and poet Eliza Griswold, director of the Princeton University Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism, has been a contributing writer for The New Yorker for more than two decades, where she has extensively covered religion, politics, and the environment. Since 2016, she has served as a distinguished writer in residence at New York University. Griswold has written and translated several books of nonfiction and poetry, including "Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America," which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2019; "I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan," which she translated to English from Pashto; and a recent book of poems, "If Men, Then." Her most recent book, "Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church," builds on years of Griswold’s immersive reporting to tell the story of a Philadelphia church and a community in crisis. (Photo: Tori Repp/Fotobuddy)

For more poetry programming, see the digital brochure for "Verse and Voice: A Festival of Poetry" taking place from April 18-May 4 at the library.

Public Humanities programs are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on April 23, 2026

Library staff members read a poem every day during April to mark National Poetry Month.

"The Queen of the Fishes" from the book The Star Whale by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Petr Horáček.