INTERWAR PHOTOGRAPHY
EUROPE AND THE US
Russian & German Interwar
Constructivist Photography
How was Russian & German formalism an “Armed Vision”?
How, when and where did it become “disarmed”?
NOTE: For the quiz next week be able to:
1)
2)
Compare European and American interwar photography.
Present the theses of Abigail Solomon-Godeau and László
Moholy-Nagy from the two assigned readings
(left) El Lissitzky Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919-20
(right) Soviet propaganda poster featuring the destruction of White Poland, 1919
Russian Constructivist form versus cartoon realist propaganda:
Russian formalism’s “armed vision” failed to communicate
to the “masses.”
El Lissitzky, (left) agit-prop panel photographed on the streets of Vitebsk in 1920, reads:
"The Machine tool depots of the factories and plants await you. Let's get industry
moving." Compare with WW II Stalinist propaganda poster: “Stalin leads”
Gustav Klutsis (Latvian Russian, 1895-1938), (left) The Electrification of the Entire
Country, photomontage,1920; (right) Klutsis, The USSR is the Stock Brigade of the
World’s Proletariat, photomontage, 1931
(center) October Revolution marks the beginning of avant-garde modern art as part of the
government propaganda bureau – “agitation and propaganda” (agitprop)
Modernist form employed
for political propaganda
Lenin in St. Petersburg
after the storming of the
winter palace, 1917
Rodchenko, Dance, oil on
canvas,1915
Rodchenko and Stepanova“
Art Engineers” and lifetime
companions, 1920s
Stepanova, Cubo-Futurist
painting, c. 1915
Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958), declared in 1921: “Technique and Industry have
confronted art with the problem of construction as an active process and not reflective. The
'sanctity' of a work as a single entity is destroyed. The museum which was the treasury of
art is now transformed into an archive.”
Alexander Rodchenko
(left) Spatial Construction / Spatial Object, 1921
(right) Rodchenko with spatial constructions, wearing industrial suit designed by
Stepanova. Photograph by Mikhail Kaufman,1924
(left) Alexander Rodchenko, Gathering for the demonstration in the courtyard of the
VChUTEMAS (Higher Institute of Technics and Art), 1928
(right) Vchutemas student constructivist exhibition, 1925
(left) Cover page by Rodchenko for Vladimir Mayakovsky's book length poem, Pro Eto
(About This), 1923. Rodchenko’s first photomontage
Shostakovich, Meyerhold, Mayakovsky
Rodchenko, rehearsing Klop, 1929
New music, theater, poetry, and art
for the revolution
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass, charcoal and
papier collé, November 1912. New media of papier collé and collage pioneered by the
cubists in the decade before WWI
Dziga Vertov (Russian filmmaker1896-1954), Still from Man with a Movie Camera, 1929
(right) Rodchenko, photomontage poster for Dziga Vertov film, Kino Eye, 1924
I am a kino-eye [film-eye]. I am in constant
motion. I draw near, then away from objects, I
crawl under, I climb onto them, I move apace with
the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full
speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I
fall on my back, I ascent with an airplane, I plunge
and soar ….
- Vertov
Rodchenko, Poster for film, Battleship Potemkin, by Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Still from the Odessa
steps massacre, famous
scene in Battleship Potemkin
Jan Tschichold, poster for Film und Foto exhibition, Stuttgart, 1929
Exhibition of over 1000 photographic works from Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United
States, including movie stills, and demonstrating reciprocal uses of camera angles,
montages, and superimpositions that were rapidly appropriated for mainstream movies.
Rodchenko, Chauffeur – Karelia, 1933.
Rodchenko makes his own presence obvious.
“What is being stressed is the manifest presence of the means of production, and an
implicit rejection of the notion of the photograph as either transparent or neutral.”
- Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Armed Vision Disarmed”
1928 Rodchenko, who gave up painting
for photography in 1927, bought himself a
Leica which, because of its handy format
and quick operation, became his
preferred tool for his work. This camera
enabled him to realize his ideas of
unusual camera positions, severe
foreshortenings of perspective, and views
of surprising details.
"One has to take several different shots of
a subject, from different points of view
and in different situations, as if one
examined it in the round rather than
looked through the same key-hole again
and again.“
-Rodchenko
Alexander Rodchenko, On the telephone, 1928
Rodchenko, Shukhov Radio Tower, 1928
Vladimir Tatlin Monument to
The Third International, l920,
Shukhov tower – “a symbol of collective
effort” – was designed to be 350 m in
height. But it required 2200 tons of steel.
Young Soviet Russia did not have enough
metal. Thus Shukhov had to decrease
height to 150 m. Lenin personally ordered
240 tons of high quality German Ruhr
steel from military stocks.
TOWERS OF
COMMUNIST
ASPIRATION
El Lissitzky (Russian 1890-1941)
(left) The Constructor, 1924, photomontage - the new artist-engineer
(right) El Lissitzky, Proun 1d, 1922, oil on canvas
(left) Rodchenko, Shukhov Radio Tower, 1928
(right) László Moholy-Nagy (American, born Hungarian, Constructivist artist, ca.18951946), Untitled (View from the Berlin Radio Tower onto chairs and tables), ca.1928
The “New Vision” =
functionalism and technologism
(left) László Moholy-Nagy, Balance study, 1924, wood and metal, reconstruction 1967
(center) László Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy, Portrait of Moholy-Nagy, 1932
(right) Moholy-Nagy, AXXV, oil on canvas,1926
László Moholy-Nagy as
“The New Vision” =
Machine aesthetics
Bauhaus master and
“artist engineer”
“In 1922 I ordered by telephone
from a sign factory five paintings on
graph paper. At the other end of
the telephone the factory
supervisor had the same kind of
paper divided into squares. He
took down the dictated shapes in
the correct position.”
Moholy-Nagy, whose last
paintings rejected the medium’s
ethos of originality and subjectivity.
The Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, designed by German architect, Walter Gropius. In
1923 Moholy Nagy was hired to instruct the metalwork shop, marking a shift from craft to
mechanical production. The same year (1923) the school slogan was changed from “A
Cathedral of Socialism” based on the Medieval cathedral workshop (bauhaus) to “Art
and Technology – A New Unity” based on the machine-production-industrial aesthetic
“The New Vision”
László Moholy-Nagy, Photogram, ca. 1924. The medium is the light-sensitive paper.
No camera.
“The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light….opens up
perspectives of a hitherto wholly unknown morphosis …. It is the most completely
dematerialized medium which the new vision commands.”
- Moholy-Nagy, “From Pigment to Light,” 1936
“Formalism for Moholy signified above all the absolute primacy of the material,
the medium itself.”
Moholy-Nagy’s definition of “Camera Vision”
“…the political implications of Russian formalist photography were sheared away from
the body of New Vision photography” in Germany (Solomon-Godeau)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Abstract seeing by means of direct records of forms produced by light; the
photogram…
Exact seeing by means of the fixation of the appearance of things: reportage
Rapid seeing by means of the fixation of movement in the shortest possible time:
snapshots
Rapid seeing by means of the fixation of movements spread over a period of
time…
Intensified seeing by means of … micro-photography
Penetrative photography by means of X-rays: radiography…
Simultaneous seeing by means of transparent superimposition: the future process
of automatic photomontage
Distorted seeing…
Camera vision was privileged because it was deemed superior to normal vision – a
prosthetic eye.
(left) Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Balcony, 1926
(right) Rodchenko, Gathering for the demonstration in the courtyard of the VChUTEMAS
(Higher Institute of Technics and Art), 1928
“The New Vision”
Moholy-Nagy, Chairs at Margate, 1935, gelatin silver print diptych
Multiples like mass production = machine aesthetic
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/lichtspiel/
(left) László Moholy-Nagy, Light Prop, 1930
In 1937, at the invitation of the Chairman of the Container Corporation of America,
Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus and in 1939,
the Chicago School of Design. In 1944, this became the Institute of Design.
Still from Light Display: Black-White-Gray
Moholy-Nagy
Rodchenko, White Sea Canal, 1933
Commissioned by Stalin to document the construction of the canal, Rodchenko did not
record the use of forced labor, nor the deaths of thousands of workers at the site.
Berlin Dada
First Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920
Raoul Hausmann (Austrian Dadaist active in Germany, 1886-1971), Tatlin at
Home, 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada
According to Hausmann, the Dadaists agreed on the term “photomontage”
because of “our aversion at playing the artist and, thinking of ourselves as
engineers … we meant to construct, to assemble our works.”
Hannah Höch (German, 1889 - 1978), Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last
Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919, Berlin Dada
Raoul Hausmann & Hannah Höch at 1920 Berlin Dada Fair (right)
An “Armed Vision”
(left) Hannah Höch, Pretty Woman, 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada
(right) Hannah Höch, Dada Ernst, 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada
John Heartfield (Born Herzfelde, German, 1891-1968) front covers of the newspaper
AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung / Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper), all 1932-33
(left) The Butcher Goering; (center) Millions Stand Behind Me; (right) Hurrah, The Butter
is Gone! Berlin Dada
An “Armed Vision”
On 10. May 1933, 20.000 books were burnt in the then Opernplatz, later Bebel Platz,
adjacent to the Opera House. Among the authors whose books were burnt were Thomas
Mann, Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Mann, Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells,
Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Helen Keller, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Emil Zola,
Sigmund Freud.
Book burning, Berlin, May 10, 1933
Arthur Kampf (German, 1865-1950)
January 30, 1933 (election night in Berlin)
"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
- Heinrich Heine
August Sander (German, 1876-1964), Brick Carrier (left), and Cook (right) 1928
from the Face of Time portfolio
August Sander, Wandering People from portfolio, Citizens of the 20th Century, 1930
Sander’s archive of German “types”
was censored by the Nazis as “decadent.”
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German 1897 – 1966), New Objectivity
Irons Used in Shoemaking, Fagus Works, c. 1925 (left) and Foxgloves, c. 1925 (right)
Hans Haacke, German, b.1936, "Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a
Real-Time System, as of May 1, 1971" 1971: 142 photographs of New York apartment
buildings, 2 maps of New York's Lower East Side and Harlem with properties marked, 6
charts outlining business relations within the real estate group.
Contemporary German Conceptual Photography
That “Imposes Order” = Typology
Bernhard and Hilla Becher (German, born 1931 and 1934 respectively)
Conceptual (typological) photography
(left) Gas Tanks, 1963
(right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall
Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers)
Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986
(right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991
Candida Höfer,(Germany, 1944, student of Bechers)
(left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III, 2003, C-print, 68 in. H
(right) Ca' Rezzonico Venezia II, 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width
Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House #9 II, 1991, 72 in. H
one of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany
Thomas Ruff, (left) Portrait, 1989, 63in. H
(center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies
“absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale
'... Like archetypal passport photos...
young people with dead eyes and
empty faces.' Ruff
California Modern: Group f/64
“The members of Group f.64 believe that photography, as an art-form, must develop
along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and
must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that
are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself.”
- Group f/64 Manifesto
Precisionist aesthetics
Willard Van Dyke (American 19061986), Cement Works, Monolith,
California, 1931, Gelatin silver print
Van Dyke organized Group f/64
Precisionist machine aesthetic
derived from Cubism and Realism
(left) Edward Weston (American 1886-1958), Pipes and Stacks: Armco, Middletown,
Ohio, 1922. Co-Founder of Group f/64
(right) Charles Sheeler, Crisscrossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor
Company, 1927
Auguste Rodin, Walking
Man, 1906
“seeing of parts – fragments
– as universal symbols”
- Weston
Edward Weston, Neil, 1922, platinotype
A series of photographs of his son Neil
Modernist fragmentation
(left) Edward Weston, Neil, 1922, platinotype. Weston based these photographs on a
classical sculpture of a male nude, Eros, made by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles in
the 4th C. BCE.
(right) Sherrie Levine, Neil, 1981, By simply making a copy of a pre-existing copy Levine subverted modernist “originality.” Postmodern appropriation art
Weston, Nude, 1936
Edward Weston, Excusado, 1925, gelatin silver print
“My excitement was absolute aesthetic response to form. For long I have considered
photographing this useful and elegant accessory to modern hygienic life…. Here was
every sensuous curve of the ‘human form divine’ but minus imperfections…Never did
the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture”
(left) Edward Weston, Maguey, Mexico, 1926, gsp
(right) Tina Modotti (Italian,1896 -1942), Mexico, 1925, platinum print
Edward Weston, Pepper # 30, 1930, gsp
“To clearly express my feeling for life with photographic beauty, present
objectively the texture, rhythm, form in nature, without subterfuge or evasion in
technique or spirit, to record the quintessence of the object or element before
my lens, rather than an interpretation, a superficial phase, or passing mood –
this is my way in photography. It is not an easy way.”
- Edward Weston, 1927.
Edward Weston, Shells, 1927. Gsp.
(right) Henry Moore (British Abstract Sculptor, 1898-1986), Embrace, bronze, c.1925
Seeking the essence of form
Weston, Shell, 1927
Compare Weston with Constantin Brancusi (French, born Romania, 1876–1957):
• (left) Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1919, photograph by artist
• (right) Brancusi, Golden Bird, 1919-20. Bronze, stone, and wood.
Brancusi’s studio
c.1900
Brancusi,
Newborn, 1915
marble
Modernist “purity” or
“essence” of form
Compare Brancusi’s 19th c.
Classical Realism (c.1900)
with his modernism of 1915
(left) Constantin Brancusi, The Muse, 1912, marble
(right) Edward Weston, Nude, 1936, gelatin silver print
"I feel that I have been more deeply moved by music, literature,
sculpture, painting, than I have by photography."
- Weston
When Weston saw the work of sculptor Constantin Brancusi for the first time he
found one piece "curiously like one of my peppers," but he noted, "I have proved
through photography that nature has all the abstract (simplified) forms that Brancusi
or any other artist could imagine. With my camera I go direct to Bancusi's source. I
find,... select and isolate what he has to 'create.' "
Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) , Golden Gate Before the Bridge
San Francisco, California, 1932
Ansel Adams, Thundercloud, Ellery Lake, High Sierra, California, 1934, gelatin silver
print
Adams: Sierra Club
photographer and
activist
The picture we make is never made for us alone; it is, and should be a communication….To
the complaint ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two
people, the photographer and the viewer.”
- Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams, Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, 1932. Gsp.
Half Dome, Merced River, 1938
Adams’s visual understanding came from being in tune with the changing nature of
light and how it moves within the landscape.
To be able to record the visual sensations of a specific quality of light, at a precise
location, and at an exact moment, Adams developed the Zone System in the
late 1930s.
A zone represents the relationship of a subject’s brightness to its density in the
negative and the corresponding tone in the final print.
Adams took the grayscale of a full-tone black-and-white print and refined it into
eleven different zones. From Zone 0, maximum black, to Zone X, pure white.
Adams identified the zones with roman numerals to avoid confusion with other
numerical combinations used in photography.
Each zone is the equivalent to one f/stop difference in subject brightness and
negative exposure.
The zone system is designed to eliminate guesswork and give photographers
repeatable control over their materials so that the outcome can be predicted
(that is, previsualized).
- Hirsch, pp 246-248
The Negative
The Negative explains the Zone System formulated by Adams and Fred Archer
in 1939/40. The Negative covers all topics related to exposing and developing
film within scope of the Zone System.
Topics in the book include discussions of philosophical viewpoint, previsualization, use of filters, pre-exposure, development modification, special
techniques of film development, and darkroom technique.
Appendixes in the back have formulas for classic darkroom chemicals,
film testing techniques, and much more. This is one of the finest technical books
ever written about photography.
Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, gsp.
Crocker Art Museum Sacramento
upcoming exhibition:
Yosemite 1938: On the Trail with
Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keeffe
February 3 - May 6, 2007
Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976),
(left) Self-Portrait, 1915, platinum print (Pictorialist)
(right) Two Callas, ca. 1929, gelatin silver print (Precisionist, f/64)
Imogen Cunningham, Roi (Triangles), 1927, gsp.
Imogen Cunningham, Triangles, 1928, gsp.
Imogen Cunningham Agave Design 2, ca. 1930, gsp., f/64 Group
Chicago Institute of Design (I.D.) Formalist Photography
“Disarmed Vision” influenced more by American photography and social
situation than by “Armed” Russian and Weimar Formalist visions.
Moholy-Nagy, Still from Light Display: Black-White-Gray, 1930
Imogen Cunningham, Agave, 1930
Harry Callahan (American 1912-1999) , Detroit, 1941, gelatin silver print, Chicago
Institute of Design
Callahan, deeply influenced by Ansel Adams, was hired by Moholy-Nagy to
teach at the I.D. in 1946. “Calahan was as far removed from the machine-age ethic of
Bauhaus photography as anybody possibly could be….The ‘interior shape of private
expreienc’ coupled with a rigorous concern for formal values effectively constituted
Callahan’s approach to photograpy, and this, more than any of Moholy’s theoretical
formulations, constituted the mainstream of American art photography through the
1960s.”
- Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Armed Vision Disarmed”
Harry Callahan, Eleanor, 1947 and (right) Eleanor, Chicago, 1949
I.D. Formalism: A “Disarmed Vision”
(left) Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) Jerome, Arizona, 1949, gelatin silver print ,
Chicago I.D.
(right) Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985), Aaron Siskind, Old Yuma Jail (detail), 1947
(left) Aaron Siskind, Jerome, Arizona, 1949, gelatin silver print, Chicago I.D. & Abstract
Expressionism
(right) Franz Kline (American Abstract Expressionist Painter, 1910-1962), Siskind, oil on
canvas,1959
American post-WW II formalism = “disarmed vision”
(left) Franz Kline, Palmerton, Pa., oil on canvas, 1941, Social Realism
(right) Aaron Siskind, Boys Playing With Toy Swords, Harlem, New York, ca.1930-1940,
Social Realism
“Armed Visions” before the “Disarmament” of post-WW II American art
American Documentary Photography
The Great Depression (1929 - c.1939)
The New Deal (1933 – 1938)
The Farm Security Administration (FSA)
“What you’ve got are not photographers.
They’re a bunch of sociologists with cameras.”
- Ansel Adams
Walker Evans (American 1903 -1975), two of three photographs for the The Bridge by
Hart Crane (1899-1932) 1930. Evan’s first publication and Crane’s major work, the booklength poem, The Bridge, expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the historical and
spiritual significance of America. Crane used the landscape of the modern, industrialized
city to create a powerful new symbolic literature. Evans was hired by the FSA in 1935.
Walker Evans, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1936
“Evans believed in finding scenes and objects whose appearance implied a story or acted
as a metaphor for an attitude toward life”
- Mary Warner Marien
Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama (Allie Mae Burroughs), 1936, from Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, by Walker Evans and James Agee, published in 1941, gelatin silver
print
Chronicle of the lives of
three families of poor
cotton-growing tenant
farmers in Hale County,
Alabama
Walker Evans, Subway Portrait, New York, 1938-41
One of series of anonymous New York subway passengers
published in 1966 as Many Are Called
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965), White Angel Bread Line, 1932
“The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are
the objects. So that no one would say, ’how did you do it, where did you find it, ‘ but
they would say that such things could be.”
- Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange, Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California, 1935
The Dust Bowl
1940 movie based on the
novel by John Steinbeck,
Grapes Of Wrath
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936
Reading: Paul Taylor, “Migrant Mother: 1936,” 1970
Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry
children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers
camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent
in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute.“
- Lange
“Armed Vision”
Lange immediately gave her photos to the San Francisco News. Migrant Mother
was published anonymously in newspapers across the US.
Robert Frank (Swiss-born American Photographer, born in 1924), The Americans, 1955
Elevator - Miami Beach
Charleston, South Carolina