MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015



December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015

The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor

Exhibition Coincides with the Culmination of the Thomas Walther Collection Project, a

Four-Year Research Collaboration Between MoMA’s Curatorial and Conservation Staff

Explores photography between the First and Second World Wars, when creative

possibilities were never richer or more varied, and when photographers approached

figuration, abstraction, and architecture with unmatched imaginative fervor. This vital

moment is dramatically captured in the photographs that constitute the Thomas Walther

Collection, a remarkable group of works presented together for the first time through

nearly 300 photographs. Made on the street and in the studio, intended for avant-garde

exhibitions or the printed page, these objects provide unique insight into the radical

intentions of their creators. Iconic works by such towering figures as Berenice Abbott, Karl

Blossfeldt, Alvin Langdon Coburn, El Lissitzky, Lucia Moholy, László Moholy- Nagy,

Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Paul Strand are featured alongside lesser-known treasures by

more than 100 other practitioners. The exhibition is organized by Quentin Bajac, the Joel

and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, and Sarah Hermanson Meister,

Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA.

The exhibition coincides with Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas

Walther Collection 1909–1949, the result of a four-year collaborative project between the

Museum’s departments of Photography and Conservation, with the participation of over

two dozen leading international photography scholars and conservators, making it the

most extensive effort to integrate conservation, curatorial, and scholarly research efforts

on photography to date. That project is composed of multiple parts including a website

that features a suite of digital visualization research tools that allow visitors to explore the

collection, a hard-bound paper catalogue of the entire Thomas Walther collection, and an

interdisciplinary symposium focusing on ways in which the digital age is changing our

engagement with historic photographs.

Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949, is organized

thematically into six sections, suggesting networks between artists, regions, and objects,

and highlighting the figures whose work Walther collected in depth, including André

Kertész, Germaine Krull, Franz Roh, Willi Ruge, Maurice Tabard, Umbo, and Edward

Weston. Enriched by key works in other mediums from MoMA's collection, this exhibition

presents the exhilarating story of a landmark chapter in photography’s history.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1496

1- THE MODERN WORLD

Even before the introduction of the handheld Leica camera in 1925, photographers were

avidly exploring fresh perspectives, shaped by the unique experience of capturing the

world through a lens and ideally suited to express the tenor of modern life in the wake of

World War I. Looking up and down, these photographers found unfamiliar points of view

that suggested a new, dynamic visual language freed from convention. Improvements in

the light sensitivity of photographic films and papers meant that photographers could

capture motion as never before. At the same time, technological advances in printing

resulted in an explosion of opportunities for photographers to present their work to

ever-widening audiences. From inexpensive weekly magazines to extravagantly produced

journals, periodicals exploited the potential of photographs and imaginative layouts, not

text, to tell stories. Among the photographers on view in this section are Martin Munkácsi

(American, born Hungary, 1896–1963), Leni Riefenstahl (German, 1902–2003), Aleksandr

Rodchenko (Russian, 1891–1956), and Willi Ruge (German, 1882–1961).

WILLI RUGE ( GERMAN 1882–1961 )

WITH MY HEAD HANGING DOWN BEFORE THE PARACHUTE OPENED… 1931

Gelatin Silver Print

Dimensions Image: 14 × 20.3 cm

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.

Gift of Thomas Walther

ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO ( RUSSIAN 1891–1956 )

DIVE 1934


Dimensions Image: 29.7 x 23.8 cm


Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange

WILLI RUGE ( GERMAN 1882 - 1961 )

SECONDS BEFORE LANDING SECONDS BEFORE LANDING

From the Series – I Photograph Myself during a Parachute Jump 1931


Dimensions Image: 20.4 × 14.1 cm



LENI RIEFENSTAHL ( GERMAN 1902–2003 )

UNTITLED 1936




Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by Exchange

WANDA WULZ ( ITALIAN 1903 - 1984 )

EXERCISE 1932

Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1932- 1939


Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.

Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange

© Fratelli Alinari Museum Collections-Studio Wulz Archive, Florence

ROBERT PETSCHOW ( GERMAN 1888 – 1945 )

LINES OF MODERN INDUSTRY: COOLING TOWER 1920 - 1929


Print Date 1920 - 1932

Dimensions Image: 8.5 × 11.5 cm - Sheet: 8.8 × 11.9 cm


Gift of Albert Renger-Patzsch, by Exchange

2- PURISM

The question of whether photography ought to be considered a fine art was hotly

contested from its invention in 1839 into the 20th century. Beginning in the 1890s, in an

attempt to distinguish their efforts from hoards of Kodak-wielding amateurs and masses

of professionals, “artistic” photographers referred to themselves as Pictorialists. They

embraced soft focus and painstakingly wrought prints so as to emulate contemporary

prints and drawings, and chose subjects that underscored the ethereal effects of their

methods. Before long, however, most avant-garde photographers had come to celebrate

precise and distinctly photographic qualities as virtues. On both sides of the Atlantic,

photographers were making this transition from Pictorialism to modernism, while

occasionally blurring the distinction. Exhibition prints could be made with precious

platinum or palladium, or matte surfaces that mimicked those materials. Perhaps

nowhere is this variety more clearly evidenced than in the work of Edward Weston,

whose suite of prints in this section suggests the range of appearances achievable with

unadulterated contact prints from his large-format negatives. Other photographers on

view include Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865 - 1932), Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican,

1902–2002), Jaromír Funke (Czech, 1896 - 1945), Bernard Shea Horne (American, 1867 -

1933), and Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864 - 1946).

JAROSLAV ROSSLER ( CZECH 1902 – 1990 )

UNTITLED 1923 - 1925




Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund

Through Robert B. Menschel

© 2014 Sylva Vitove-Rösslerova

BERNARD SHEA HORNE ( AMERICAN 1867 – 1933 )


Platinum Print



Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther

http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/artists/24595.html

EDWARD WESTON ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1958 )

ATTIC 1921

Palladium Print

Dimensions: 18.9 × 23.9 cm


Grace M. Mayer Fund and gift of Mrs. Mary Donant and Carl Sandburg, by Exchange

BERNARD SHEA HORNE ( AMERICAN 1867 – 1933 )


Platinum Print




Grace M. Mayer Fund and gift of Mrs. Mary Donant and Carl Sandburg, by Exchange

JAROMÍR FUNKE ( CZECH 1896–1945 )


PLATES 1923 - 1924






STEEL: ARMCO, MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - 1922

Palladium Print - Print Date 1922

Dimensions Image: 23 × 17.4 cm


© 1981 Center for Creative Photography,

Arizona Board of Regents.


STEEL: ARMCO, MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - 1922

DESCRIPTION

In Edward Weston’s journals, which he began on his trip to Ohio and New York in fall

1922, the artist wrote of the exhilaration he felt while photographing the “great plant and

giant stacks of the American Rolling Mill Company” in Middletown, Ohio. He then went to

see the great photographer and tastemaker Alfred Stieglitz. Were he still publishing the

magazine Camera Work, Stieglitz told him, he would have reproduced some of Weston’s

recent images in it, including, in particular, one of his smokestacks. The photograph’s

clarity and the photographer’s frank awe at the beauty of the brute industrial subject

seemed clear signs of advanced modernist tendencies.

In moving away from the soft focus and geometric stylization of his recent images, such as

Attic of 1921 (MoMA 1902.2001), Weston was discovering a more straightforward

approach, one of considered confrontation with the facts of the larger world much like

that of his close friend Johan Hagemeyer, who was photographing such modern subjects

as smokestacks, telephone wires, and advertisements. Shortly before his trip east,

Weston had met R. M. Schindler, the Austrian architect, and had been excited by his

unapologetically spare, modern house and its implications for art and design. Weston was

also reading avant-garde European art magazines full of images and essays extolling

machines and construction. Stimulated by these currents, Weston saw that by the time he

got to Ohio he was “ripe to change, was changing, yes changed.”

The visit to Armco was the critical pivot, the hinge between Weston’s Pictorialist past and

his modernist future. It marked a clear leave-taking from his bohemian circle in Los

Angeles and the first step toward the cosmopolitan connections he made in New York and

in Mexico City, where he moved a few months later to live with the Italian actress and

artist Tina Modotti. The Armco photographs went with him and became talismans of the

sea change, emblematic works that decorated his studio in Mexico, along with a Japanese

print and a print by Picasso. When he sent a representation of his best work to the Film

und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929, one of the smokestacks was included.

In the midst of such transformation, Weston maintained tried-and-true darkroom

procedures. He had used an enlarger in earlier years but had abandoned the technique

because he felt that too much information was lost in the projection. Instead he

increasingly favored contact printing. To make the smokestack print, Weston enlarged his

3 ¼ by 4 ¼ inch (8.3 by 10.8 centimeter) original negative onto an 8 by 10 inch (20.3 by

25.4 centimeter) interpositive transparency, which he contact printed to a second sheet

of film in the usual way, creating the final 8 by 10 inch negative. Weston was frugal; he

was known to economize by purchasing platinum and palladium paper by the roll from

Willis and Clements in England and trimming it to size. He exposed a sheet of palladium

paper to the sun through the negative and, after processing the print, finished it by

applying aqueous retouching media to any flaws. The fragile balance of the photograph’s

chemistry, however, is evinced in a bubble-shaped area of cooler tonality hovering over

the central stacks. The print was in Modotti’s possession at the time of her death in

Mexico City, in 1942.

—Lee Ann Daffner, Maria Morris Hambourg

http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/84082.html




JAROSLAV RÖSSLER ( CZECH 1902–1990 )

UNTITLED 1924

Pigment Print

Dimensions Image: 23 × 23 cm






Horace W. Goldsmith Fund Through Robert B. Menschel

3- REINVENTING PHOTOGRAPHY

In 1925, László Moholy-Nagy articulated an idea that became central to the New Vision

movement: although photography had been invented 100 years earlier, it was only now

being discovered by the avant-garde circles for all its aesthetic possibilities. As products of

technological culture, with short histories and no connection to the old fine-art

disciplines—which many contemporary artists considered discredited—photography and

cinema were seen as truly modern instruments that offered the greatest potential for

transforming visual habits. From the photogram to solarization, from negative prints to

double exposures, the New Vision photographers explored the medium in countless ways,

rediscovering known techniques and inventing new ones. Echoing the cinematic

experiments of the same period, this emerging photographic vocabulary was rapidly

adopted by the advertising industry, which appreciated the visual efficiency of its bold

simplicity. Florence Henri (Swiss, born America, 1893 - 1982), Edward Quigley (American,

1898 - 1977), Franz Roh (German, 1890 - 1965), Franciszka Themerson and Stefan

Themerson (British, born Poland, 1907 - 1988 and 1910 - 1988), and František Vobecký

(Czech, 1902 - 1991) are among the numerous photographers represented here.

EDMUND KESTING ( GERMAN 1892 – 1970 )

PHOTOGRAM LIGHTBULB 1927





Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by Exchange

© 2014/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Germany

EL LISSITZKY ( RUSSIAN 1890 – 1941 )

KURT SCHWITTERS 1924





ISTVAN KERNY ( HUNGARIAN 1879 – 1963 )

NEPTUNE 1916


Print Date 1916–35

Dimensions Image: 16 cm

Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Robert Capa, by Exchange

FRANCIS BRUGUIERE ( AMERICAN 1879 – 1945 )

VIOLENT INTERVENTION 1925 - 1929



Dimensions Image: 24 x 18.9 cm



© 1991 Kenneth H. Bruguière and Kathleen Bruguière Anderson


ALVIN LANGDON COBURN ( AMERICAN 1882 – 1966 )

VORTOGRAPH 1916 - 1917


Dimensions: 28.2 x 21.2 cm


Grace M. Mayer Fund

ADOLF NAVARA ( CZECH, ACTIVE C. 1930S)

UNTITLED C. 1930


Print Date c. 1930–35




HANS RICHTER ( AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1888 – 1976 )

UNTITLED STILL FROM FILM STUDY ( 1928 ) 1927





MARGARET BOURKE - WHITE ( AMERICAN 1904 – 1971 )

UNTITLED - FEBRUARY 1931




Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of James N. Rosenberg, by Exchange

© 2014 Estate of Margaret Bourke-White/Licensed by VAGA, New York


HANNES MEYER ( SWISS 1889 – 1954 )

FILM 1926

Two Gelatin Silver Prints Mounted on White Cardboard

Print Date 1926

Dimensions Image: 21.2 × 3.4 cm - Mount: 29.6 × 21 cm


© Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

OSKAR NERLINGER ( GERMAN 1893 – 1969 )

MOTORCYCLE IN THE RACE 1925


Dimensions: 22 × 17.4 cm



STEFAN THEMERSON ( BRITISH, BORN POLAND 1910 – 1988 )

FRANCISZKA THEMERSON ( BRITISH, BORN POLAND 1907 – 1988 )

UNTITLED, FROM MOMENT MUSICAL 1933

Gelatin Silver Prints on White Cardboard


Dimensions Mount: 37.8 × 39 cm

Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by exchange

© 2014 Themerson Estate

FRANZ ROH ( GERMAN 1890 – 1965 )






© Estate Franz Roh, Munich


THE COLLECTION

In the 1920s and ’30s photography underwent a period of exploration, experimentation,

technical innovation, and graphic discovery so dramatic that it generated repeated claims

that the true age of discovery was not when photography was invented but when it came

of age, in this era, as a dynamic, infinitely flexible, and easily transmissible medium. The

Thomas Walther Collection concentrates on that second moment of growth. The Walther

Collection’s 341 photographs by almost 150 artists, most of them European, together

convey a period of collective innovation that is now celebrated as one of the major

episodes of modern art.

THE PROJECT

Our research is based on the premise that photographs of this period were not born as

disembodied images; they are physical things—discrete objects made by certain

individuals at particular moments using specific techniques and materials. Shaped by its

origin and creation, the photographic print harbors clues to its maker and making, to the

causes it may have served, and to the treatment it has received, and these bits of

information, gathered through close examination of the print, offer fresh perspectives on

the history of the era. “Object:Photo”—the title of this study—reflects this approach.

In 2010, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave the Museum a grant to encourage deep

scholarly study of the Walther Collection and to support publication of the results. Led by

the Museum’s Departments of Photography and Conservation, the project elicited

productive collaborations among scholars, curators, conservators, and scientists, who

investigated all of the factors involved in the making, appearance, condition, and history

of each of the 341 photographs in the collection. The broadening of narrow

specializations and the cross-fertilization between fields heightened appreciation of the

singularity of each object and of its position within the history of its moment. Creating

new standards for the consideration of photographs as original objects and of

photography as an art form of unusually rich historical dimensions, the project affords

both experts and those less familiar with its history new avenues for the appreciation of

the medium. The results of the project are presented in multiple parts: on the website, in

a hard-bound paper catalogue of the entire Thomas Walther Collection (also titled

Object:Photo), and through an interdisciplinary symposium focusing on the ways in which

the digital age is changing our engagement with historic photographs.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/the_project.html#intro

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK


Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, The Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to

being the foremost museum of modern art in the world.

Through the leadership of its Trustees and staff, The Museum of Modern Art manifests

this commitment by establishing, preserving, and documenting a collection of the highest

order that reflects the vitality, complexity and unfolding patterns of modern and

contemporary art; by presenting exhibitions and educational programs of unparalleled

significance; by sustaining a library, archives, and conservation laboratory that are

recognized as international centers of research; and by supporting scholarship and

publications of preeminent intellectual merit.

Central to The Museum of Modern Art’s mission is the encouragement of an ever-deeper

understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse local,

national, and international audiences that it serves. You may read more about MoMA’s

entire information to click below link.

http://press.moma.org/about/


DIRECTOR DR. GLENN D. LOWRY


DIRECTOR DR. GLENN D. LOWRY



HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Walther Collection is particularly suited to such a study because its photographs are

so various in technique, geography, genre, and materials as to make it a mine of diverse

data. The revolutions in technology that made the photography of this period so flexible

and responsive to the impulse of the operator threw open the field to all comers. The

introduction of the handheld Leica in 1925 (a small camera using strips of 35mm

motion-picture film), of enlargers to make positive prints from the Leica’s little negatives,

and of easy-to-use photographic papers—each of these was respectively a watershed

event. Immediately sensing the potential of these tools, artists began to explore the

medium; without any specialized training, painters such as László Moholy-Nagy and

Aleksandr Rodchenko could become photographers and teachers almost overnight.

Excitedly and with an open sense of possibility, they freely experimented in the darkroom

and in the studio, producing negative prints, collages and photomontages, photograms,

solarizations, and combinations of these. Legions of serious amateurs also began to

photograph, and manufacturers produced more types of cameras with different

dimensions and capacities: besides the Leica, there was the Ermanox, which could

function in low light, motion-picture cameras that could follow and stop action, and many

varieties of medium- and larger-format cameras that could be adapted for easy transport.

The industry responded to the expanding range of users and equipment with a bonanza of

photographic papers in an assortment of textures, colors, and sizes. Multiple purposes

also generated many kinds of prints: best for reproduction in books or newspapers were

slick, ferrotyped glossies, unmounted and small enough to mail, while photographs for

exhibition were generally larger and mounted to stiff boards. Made by practitioners

ranging from amateurs to professional portraitists, journalists, illustrators, designers,

critics, and artists of all stripes, the pictures in the Walther Collection are a true

representation of the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of photography in this period of

diversification.

CONSERVATION SCIENCE

The conservation objectives were manifold: to determine the manner of the photographs’

construction—the material constituents of both the image and its paper— and to test a

new methodology, previously applied only to smaller sets of pictures. To this end the

conservation team gathered literature, magazines, advertisements, and broadsides of the

period—tracking the appearance and history of once familiar products and techniques, so

many now given up to history—and launched into a suite of technical analyses for each

photograph in the collection. Chris McGlinchey, the Museum’s Sally and Michael Gordon

Conservation Scientist, who had pioneered the use of handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF)

devices on photographs in 2001, set to work, and Ana Martins, Associate Conservation

Scientist, statistically evaluated the immense data sets that the research had produced.

Surface texture, a special line of investigation for Paul Messier, independent conservator,

and Jim Coddington, the Museum’s Chief Conservator, drew on a body of research in

imaging systems built up by, among others, the Cultural Heritage Imaging group in San

Francisco, using techniques of polynomial mapping and reflectance transformation

imaging. Messier’s modifications of these methods enabled the study, documentation,

and sharing of the surfaces of photographs by the same artists in other museum

collections. The success of documenting photographs from different collections with

these kinds of reproducible results not only raised the bar for standards of collaboration

but made possible future comparisons that adhere to these published methods and

procedures. MoMA was thus positioned not only to synthesize and mine the largest body

of raw data on a group of photographs ever gathered, but to extend that effort beyond its

own walls.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/the_project.html#intro

You may visit a comprehensive web page that prepare for the exhibition of Modern

Photographs From the Thomas Walther Collection at Moma to read all the essays, artist’s

information and to see all the photographs with there knowledge to click below special

link.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/#home

THE ARTIST’S LIFE

Photography is particularly well suited to capturing the distinctive nuances of the human

face, and photographers delighted in and pushed the boundaries of portraiture

throughout the 20th century. The Thomas Walther Collection features a great number of

portraits of artists and self-portraits as varied as the individuals portrayed. Additionally,

the collection conveys a free-spirited sense of community and daily life, highlighted here

with photographs made by André Kertész and by students and faculty at the Bauhaus.

When the Hungarian-born Kertész moved to Paris in 1925, he couldn’t afford to purchase

photographic paper, so he would print on less expensive postcard stock. These prints,

whose small scale requires that the viewer engage with them intimately, function as

miniature windows into the lives of Kertész’s bohemian circle of friends. The group of

photographs made at the Bauhaus in the mid-1920s, before the medium was formally

integrated into the school’s curriculum, similarly expresses friendships and everyday life

captured and printed

in an informal manner. Portraits by Claude Cahun (French, 1894 - 1954), Lotte Jacobi

(American, born Germany, 1896 - 1990), Lucia Moholy (British, born Czechoslovakia, 1894

- 1989), Man Ray (American, 1890 - 1976), August Sander (German, 1876 - 1964) and

Edward Steichen (American, born Luxembourg, 1879 - 1973) are among the highlights of

this gallery.

ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )

MONDRIAN'S GLASSES AND PIPE 1926


Print Date 1926–c. 1928


Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Grace M. Mayer Fund

© Estate of André Kertész

GEORG MUCHE ( GERMAN 1895 – 1987 )

REFLECTION: THE WEAVING WORKSHOP IN THE BALL 1921





© Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

EL LISSITZKY ( RUSSIAN 1890 – 1941 )

SELF-PORTRAIT - 1924


Print Date 1924


Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by exchange

© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

GERMAINE KRULL ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1897 – 1985 )

JEAN COCTEAU 1929





GUSTAV KLUTSIS ( LATVIAN 1895 – 1938 )

UNTITLED 1926





IWAO YAMAWAKI ( JAPANESE 1898 – 1987 )

UNTITLED 1931


Dimensions: 22 x 16.5 cm



WALTER A. PETERHANS ( AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1897 – 1960 )

ANDOR WEININGER, BERLIN 1930





© Estate Walter Peterhans, Museum Folkwang, Essen

GERTRUD ARNDT ( GERMAN 1903 – 2000 )

AT THE MASTERS’ HOUSES 1929 - 1930





LORE FEININGER ( GERMAN 1901 – 1991 )

ERICH SALOMON 1929






LÉGER STUDIO - 1927







GÉZA BLATTNER 1925






5- BETWEEN SURREALISM & MAGIC REALISM

In the mid-1920s, European artistic movements ranging from Surrealism to New

Objectivity moved away from a realist approach by highlighting the strange in the familiar

or trying to reconcile dreams and reality. Echoes of these concerns, centered on the

human figure, can be found in this gallery. Some photographers used anti-naturalistic

methods—capturing hyperreal, close-up details; playing with scale; and rendering the

body as landscape—to challenge the viewer’s perception. Others, in line with Sigmund

Freud’s definition of “the uncanny” as an effect that results from the blurring of

distinctions between the real and the fantastic, offered visual plays on life and the lifeless,

the animate and the inanimate, confronting the human body with surrogates in the form

of dolls, mannequins, and masks. Photographers influenced by Surrealism, such as

Maurice Tabard, subjected the human figure to distortions and transformations by

experimenting with photographic techniques either while capturing the image or while

developing it in the darkroom. Additional photographers on view include Aenne Biermann

(German, 1898 - 1933), Jacques-André Boiffard (French, 1902 - 1961), Max Burchartz

(German, 1887 - 1961), Helmar Lerski (Swiss, 1871 - 1956), and Stanisław Ignacy

Witkiewicz (Polish, 1885 - 1939).


DISTORTION #126 - 1933



Dimensions Image: 20.3 × 34 cm



HERBERT BAYER ( AMERICAN, BORN AUSTRIA 1900 - 1985)

HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE 1932




Acquired Through the Generosity of Howard Stein

MAX BURCHARTZ ( GERMAN 1887 – 1961 )

EYE 1928


Dimensions: 30.2 x 40 cm


Acquired Through the Generosity of Peter Norton

MAURICE TABARD ( FRENCH 1897 – 1984 )

SOLARIZED FILM 1936

Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1936 - 1955

Dimensions Image: 24.1 x 12 cm - Mount: 24 × 18 cm


Gift of Robert Shapazian, by Exchange

MAURICE TABARD ( FRENCH 1897 – 1984 )

UNTITLED 1928

( HAND ON WALL WITH SHADOW )





RAOUL HAUSMANN



Print Date 1931-1933



© 2014 Raoul Hausmann/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

RAOUL HAUSMANN


DESCRIPTION

As a key member of the Berlin-based Dadaists, between 1918 and 1922 Raoul Hausmann

exhibited assemblage sculptures, collages, and photomontages made with magazines and

newspaper clippings. Being a Dadaist, he dissociated himself from photography—

considered a positivist medium—in a 1921 unpublished manifesto titled “Wir sind nicht

die Photographen” (We are not the photographers), but by the late twenties he had taken

up photography in earnest, making straightforward images of landscapes and plants

before turning to more experimental works on light and optics.

Hausmann made this untitled image in February 1931, during his intensive years of

experimental photography and prior to his departure from Berlin in 1933. The model is his

second wife, Hedwig Mankiewitz-Hausmann, who is pictured in other of his photographs

from early that year. This print is among Hausmann’s more modest small formats from

the early 1930s. He enlarged the image onto double weight paper with a semireflective

surface and later trimmed the print; Hausmann printed on a range of paper types but

favored German Agfa-Brovira papers. On the verso, the presence of adhesive residues

along the top and a faint dark spot at the top center, possibly due to adhesive residue,

indicates that this print was previously attached to a support, perhaps as part of a

photomontage or other presentation.

Hausmann took at least two other images of this model and mirror, most likely at the

same time. He used one in an untitled photomontage exhibited in Fotomontage,a show

organized by his friend César Domela-Nieuwenhuis and mounted in April–May 1931 at the

Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in Berlin. Hausmann published this image in the Cologne-based

review A bis Z, in May 1931. In 1946 he included another version in two other

photomontages: L’Acteur (now in the collection of Institut Valencià d’Art Modern) and an

untitled work in which he kept only a part of the enlarged eye. In all the images, the

reflection in the shaving mirror magnifies the organ of vision, the eye, in line with many

avant-garde photographic works of that period. The round mirror becomes a metaphor

for the camera’s mechanical lens, which enables the operator to see the world literally

larger than life. In another untitled work (MoMA 1689.2001), Hausmann used a lens

instead of a mirror to achieve a similar magnification.

—Quentin Bajac, Hanako Murata


JOHAN NIEGEMAN (DUTCH 1902 – 1977 )













UMBO ( OTTO UMBEHR ) ( GERMAN 1902 – 1980 )

WARRIORLIKE FACE 1926 - 1927

Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1926–27



© 2014 Umbo/Gallery Kicken Berlin/Phyllis Umbehr/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

HARRY LACHMAN ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1975 )

UNTITLED STILL FROM THE MAGICIAN ( 1926 ) 1925





6- DYNAMICS OF THE CITY

In his 1928 manifesto “The Paths of Contemporary Photography,” Aleksandr Rodchenko

advocated for a new photographic vocabulary that would be more in step with the pace

of modern urban life and the changes in perception it implied. Rodchenko was not alone

in this quest: most of the avant-garde photographers of the 1920s and 1930s were city

dwellers, striving to translate the novel and shocking experience of everyday life into

photographic images. Equipped with newly invented handheld cameras, they used

unusual vantage points and took photos as they moved, struggling to re-create the

constant flux of images that confronted the pedestrian. Reflections in windows and

vitrines, blurry images of quick motions, double exposures, and fragmentary views portray

the visual cacophony of the metropolis. The work of Berenice Abbott (American, 1898 -

1991), Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882 - 1966), Germanie Krull (Dutch, born

Germany, 1897 - 1985), Alexander Hackenschmied (Czech, 1907 - 2004), Umbo (German,

1902 - 1980), and

Imre Kinszki (Hungarian, 1901 - 1945) is featured in this final gallery.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1496


GRANDS BOULEVARDS 1926



Dimensions Image: 7.8 x 10.9 cm - Sheet: 8.4 × 12.9 cm



ANTON BRUEHL ( AMERICAN, BORN AUSTRALIA 1900 – 1982 )

UNTITLED 1929





© 2014 Anton Bruehl Estate


CHARLES SHEELER( AMERICAN 1883 – 1965 )

FORD PLANT, RIVER ROUGE, BLAST FURNACE AND DUST CATCHER 1927



Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B.

Menschel and gift of Lincoln Kirstein, by Exchange

© 2014 The Lane Collection

CESAR DOMELA – NIEUWENHUIS ( DUTCH 1900 – 1992 )

HAMBURG, GERMANY'S GATEWAY TO THE WORLD 1930



Dimensions Image: 40.3 × 41.9 cm - Mount: 48.5 × 49.9 cm



Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by exchange

© 2014 César Domela/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

WALKER EVANS ( AMERICAN 1903 – 1975 )

VOTIVE CANDLES, NEW YORK CITY 1929 - 1930



The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Willard Van

Dyke and Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., by Exchange

FLORENCE HENRI ( SWISS, BORN AMERICA 1893 – 1982 )



Dimensions: 9.1 × 12 cm


Gift of Eulabee Dix, by Exchange

J. JAY HIRZ ( AMERICAN )

BROOKLYN BRIDGE IN RAINY WEATHER 1927





LEE MILLER ( AMERICAN 1907 – 1977 )





Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. The Family of Man Fund

© 2014 Lee Miller Archives, England

MARJORIE CONTENT ( AMERICAN 1895 – 1984 )

STEAMSHIP PIPES, PARIS

Winter 1931




Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Andreas Feininger, by exchange

© Estate of Marjorie Content


JAROSLAV ROSSLER ( CZECH 1902 – 1990 )

UNTITLED 1924

Gelatin Silver Print With Pencil and Black Ink


Medium Gelatin Silver Print With Pencil and Black Ink

Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Robert B. Menschel Fund, by exchange



MYSTERY OF THE STREET 1928

Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1928- 1932

Dimensions Image: 29 x 23.5 cm





MYSTERY OF THE STREET 1928

DESCRIPTION

Trained at the Bauhaus under Johannes Itten, a master of expressivity, Berlin-based

photographer Umbo (born Otto Umbehr) believed that intuition was the source of

creativity. To this belief, he added Constructivist structural strategies absorbed from Theo

Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, and others in Berlin in the early twenties. Their influence is

evident in this picture’s diagonal, abstract construction and its spatial disorientation. It is

also classic Umbo, encapsulating his intuitive vision of the world as a resource of poetic,

often funny, ironic, or dark bulletins from the social unconscious.

After he left the Bauhaus, Umbo worked as assistant to Walther Ruttmann on his film

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1926. In 1928, photographing from his window either

very early or very late in the day and either waiting for his “actors” to achieve a balanced

composition or, perhaps, positioning them as a movie director would, Umbo exposed

three negatives. He had an old 5 by 7 inch (12.7 by 17.8 centimeter) stand camera and a 9

by 12 centimeter (3 9/16 by 4 ¾ inch) Deckrullo Contessa-Nettle camera, but which he

used for these overhead views is not known, as he lost all his prints and most negatives in

the 1943 bombing of Berlin. The resulting images present a world in which the shadows

take the active role. Umbo made the insubstantial rule the corporeal and the dark

dominate the light through a simple but inspired inversion: he mounted the pictures

upside down (note the signature in ink in the lower right).

In 1928–29, Umbo was a founding photographer at Dephot (Deutscher Photodienst), a

seminal photography agency in Berlin dedicated to creating socially relevant and visually

fascinating photoessays, an idea originated by Erich Solomon. Simon Guttmann, who

directed the business, hired creative nonconformists, foremost among them the

bohemian Umbo, who slept in the darkroom; Umbo in turn drew the brothers Lore

Feininger and Lyonel Feininger to the agency, which soon also boasted Robert Capa and

Felix H. Man. Dephot hired Dott, the best printer in Berlin, and it was he who made the

large exhibition prints, such as this one, ordered by New York gallerist Julien Levy when he

visited the agency in 1931. Umbo showed thirty-nine works, perhaps also printed by Dott,

in the 1929 exhibition Film und Foto, and he put Guttmann in touch with the Berlin

organizer of the show; accordingly, Dephot was the source for some images in the

accompanying book, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here comes the new photographer!).

Levy introduced Umbo’s photographs to New York in Surréalisme (January 1932) and

showcased them again at the Julien Levy Gallery, together with images by Herbert Bayer,

Jacques-André Boiffard, Roger Parry, and Maurice Tabard, in his 1932 exhibition Modern

European Photography.

—Maria Morris Hambourg, Hanako Murata








RAOUL HAUSMANN ( GERMAN, BORN AUSTRIA 1886 – 1971 )

UNTITLED C. 1930




Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B.

© 2014 Raoul Hausmann/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris


PAUL CITROEN ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1896 – 1983 )

METROPOLIS 1923





© 2014 Paul Citroen/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/Pictoright, Amsterdam

IMRE KINSZKI ( HUNGARIAN 1901 – 1945 )

UNTITLED C. 1930





ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO ( RUSSIAN 1891 – 1956 )

DEMONSTRATION 1932





FRED KORTH (AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1902 – 1983 )

UNTITLED C. 1928




Gift of Robert and Joyce Menschel, by Exchange

DZIGA VERTOV ( RUSSIAN, 1895 – 1954 )






LASZLO MOHOLY - NAGY ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY. 1895 – 1946 )

BERLIN, RADIO TOWER 1928





© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

SASHA STONE ( AMERICAN, BORN RUSSIA 1895 – 1940 )

THE EINSTEIN TOWER IN POTSDAM (THE COELOSTAT IN THE UPPER DOME

THAT CATCHES AND PROJECTS THE LIGHT OF THE STARS INTO THE LABORATORY) 1928





GERMAINE KRULL ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1897–1985)





Gift of David H. McAlpin, by Exchange



December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015

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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

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