Photographic History Collection: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
name: label: maker
content: Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo
notes: label: Description
content: The László Moholy-Nagy Collection in the National Museum of American History’s Photographic History Collection is comprised of seven photograms, two photomontages, and one gelatin silver print. Ranging from the early 1920s to the late 1930s, these photographs represent the distinctive styles and techniques utilized by Moholy-Nagy. Working in Europe after World War I, dramatic changes were occurring in the art world as Moholy-Nagy was entering the field. Movements such as Dadaism and Constructivism were dominating the artistic landscape in Europe and influenced artists such as Moholy-Nagy. Originally a painter, Moholy-Nagy began to work with photography in the early 1920s and through his experimentation with the medium, made significant contributions to the history of photography.
label: Description
content: László Moholy-Nagy was born in Hungary in 1895. After attending school at Gymnasium, which was the equivalent to high school, he went on to study law. When he was in his twenties, a formative period in his life, the advent of World War I occurred. After serving in the army and being seriously wounded in 1917, he spent a substantial amount of time recovering in a military hospital where he reflected on his immortality and role as an artist. Before his time in the army, he drew postcards as a hobby, but during WWI, this hobby escalated into a serious concentration. Moholy-Nagy was producing drawings of haggard soldiers, drained and weary from the experience of war. When he was discharged from the army, he returned home where shortly after his watercolors were shown at exhibition at the National Salon in Budapest. He began to seriously pursue art in a time that was filled with the formation of several artistic movements; a time when manifestos and declarations heralded a new phase of an artistic revolution. He was most attracted to the political group of Hungarian Activism and went on to sign their revolutionary statement in 1919. This participation in Activism exposed him to new ideas of modernism, which he explored in his early paintings. After producing primarily landscapes and portraiture for a year after joining the Activists, he left Hungary and traveled from country to country. Eventually he settled in Berlin, where his artistic career began to flourish.
label: Description
content: During his time in Berlin, he experienced several artistic movements that were sweeping their way across Europe—Dadaism and Constructivism. Dadaism was a movement formed as a reaction to World War I. Artists cast aside all previously conceived notions of making art and photography and explored new forms of expression. Collage and photomontage, or taking several pre-existing elements and combining them to make a new composition, were appealing artistic techniques for Moholy-Nagy. Constructivism originated in Russia in 1919 and aimed to emphasize the spatial presence of an object as well as its material properties. The Constructivists worked with bold diagonals which added more dimension to a flat surface. Originally the focus of Constructivism was on three dimensional objects but later developed into posters and books that utilized the technique of montage to give a three dimensional effect. With these movements as a guiding force, Moholy-Nagy began to experiment with photography.
label: Description
content: Though he considered himself to be foremost a painter, photography offered him new creative possibilities. In 1922 he attended the Dada-Constructivist Congress in Weimar, at which point he was probably influenced by Dadaist principles that were particularly appealing to him. The Dadaists were staunchly “anti-art” or against traditional mediums of drawing, paintings, or sculpture. Instead, they used pre-existing images and assembled them into a new image. One of their techniques, photomontage, was one that Moholoy-Nagy embraced as one of his signature styles. Moholy-Nagy held a strong belief that the camera should not be used to record images from nature but rather to create abstract images. He took great interest in creating photomontages, which he called fotoplastiks, and created numerous prints that explored various compositions. To create a photomontage, Moholy-Nagy would create a collage by combining and layering different pre-existing images and then photograph the entire composition to create a final gelatin silver print. In the photomontages housed in the Photographic History Collection, Moholy-Nagy draws diagonal lines across the picture plane to activate the image and add depth. This was a common technique used by Moholy-Nagy and was linked to the concept of three dimensionality promoted by the Constructivists.
label: Description
content: In 1923, Moholy-Nagy joined the Bauhaus in Weimar. A school for the experimentation with art and architecture, the Bauhaus was home to some of the greatest artistic minds of the early 20th century. Within a year of joining the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy took the place of closest associate to director Walter Gropius. During his time there, Moholy-Nagy wrote several books on photography and co-edited publications on modern art and design. It was his association with the Bauhaus that would influence his work for the rest of his career. He even relocated to the United States in 1937 to become the director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, and it was there that he spent the rest of his life until he died in 1946.
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content: Along with his photomontages or fotoplastiks, Moholy- Nagy produced photograms. These photograms were a unique way to create a photographic image. Placing three dimensional objects on a flat piece of photographic paper and then exposing them to a light source would transfix the image onto the paper. The result was an often geometric composition that resembled shadows of the original object. He worked with his wife Lucia, a photographer whom he married in 1921, and collaborated with her on many projects. While they were not the first photographers to intentionally use photograms, (Man Ray and Christian Schad were the forerunners), they did contribute greatly to refining the technique and promoting its artistic validity. The Photographic History Collection holds seven unique photograms of Moholy-Nagy, including five of the earliest photograms he created. In accordance with Moholy-Nagy’s philosophy of using the camera to create abstract images, these photograms resemble nothing in the natural world, but instead they are images created solely by human hand.
label: Description
content: Moholy-Nagy worked extensively in making photographs in which the camera was not the most important factor in creating the image. He did, however, produce a final category of photographs that were made with a camera. In these photographs, he portrayed images that he found visually striking. In the camera-made photograph in the Photographic History Collection, a group of fish heads on a plate is evokes the strong geometric shapes and diagonals that Moholy-Nagy worked with in his fotoplastisks and photograms. Moholy-Nagy always looked to intriguing objects to capture in a photographic image.
label: Description
content: At a time when concepts in art were undergoing dramatic transformation and development, László Moholy-Nagy was part of this shifting artistic landscape. Contributing significantly to the advancement of photographic techniques in the early 20th century, he experimented with new forms of expression. The photograms, photomontages, and camera-made photographs in the Photographic History Collection represent a sample of the major photographic achievements made during Moholy-Nagy’s prolific career.
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content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Photography
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: COLL.PHOTOS.000063
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy collection