Module 7: European modernisms (Modernist alternatives to straight photography; Surrealism + Euro moderns)

l'informe (formless)

***direct contradiction to Edward Weston's dedication to form** -lighting and cropping of human figures and other subjects to undo form -see in Brassai's Paris in the Fog at Night --l'informe with Brassai (formless; unmaking form); opposite of formalism seen in f/64 one of the major ideas proposed by George bataille Thai defines this notion with an interesting definition he writes a dictionary begins with it no longer gives the meaning of words but their tasks the formless or laugh form is not only an adjectives having a given meaning but a term that serves to bring things down in the world generally requiring that each state have its form what it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere like a spider or an earthworm in fact core academic meant to be happy the universe would have to take shape all the philosophy has no other goal it is a matter of giving a frock-coat to what is a mathematical frock-coat on the other hand affirming that the Universe resembles nothing and is only formulas amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit wait but I saw accomplish with this notion of formless was nothing less than the very undoing of all of Western philosophy metaphysics all of that sir traditional Endeavors that claim to stake meaning higher meaning privacy of thought over matter that we saw the 4in man race solarized image here in the foggy night time mysterious kind of atmosphere of the Avenue did it so that's why in Paris we see the car coming down the street with its headlights on and the streetlights to the park in a disappearing Into The Mists that this is a space in which darkness and matter seem to follow up almost there a possibility of form we have here to photographs one by Brysi and one by Man Ray focusing on the human body both of which arguably take advantage of this notion of the out form of formless the Act form can take place through simple lighting and cropping it is it defamation a process of undoing the fundamental notion of form itself so in the brass eye at the top is woman's body is cropped off lit in a certain way so that it starts to resemble perhaps a phallus and similarly in the Man Ray below dramatically Lich and cropped view of torso convert it into a Bull's Head

Berger, Political Uses of Photo-Montage (p. 28-32)

- John Heartfield - to the service of a mass political struggle. - turns the technique of photomontage into a means of (Marxist) political education - With scissors he cuts out events and objects from original scenes --> arranges them in a new, unexpected, discontinuous scene to make a political point - for example, parliament placed in a wooden coffin. - everything which has been cut out keeps its familiar photographic appearance. We are still looking first at things and only afterwards at symbols. - But because these things have been shifted, because the natural continuities within which they normally exist have been broken, and because they have now been arranged to transmit an unexpected message, we are made conscious of the arbitrariness of their continuous normal message. - Their ideological covering or disguise, which fits them so well when they are in their proper place that it becomes indistinguishable from their appearances, is abruptly revealed for what it is. - there is a sense of everything having been soiled - Apart from what they depict, the images themselves are sordid: or, more precisely, they express disgust at their own sordidness. - physical disgust similar to that of modern political cartoons - 3 examples: 1932; A photograph of Hitler returning the Nazi salute at a mass meeting (which we do not see). Behind him, and much larger than he is, the faceless figure of a man. This man is discreetly passing a wad of banknotes into Hitler's open hand raised above his head. The message of the cartoon is that Hitler is being supported and financed by the big industrialists. + Hitler's charismatic gesture is being divested of its accepted current meaning. Evokes disgust similar to political portrait caricatures of Daumier. - A cartoon of one month later. Two broken skeletons lying in a crater of mud on the Western Front, photographed from above. Everything has disintegrated except for the nailed boots. An example of how he used this technique to demystify things. Photo-montage is at its weakest it uses its own means to further rhetorical mystification (when it is purely symbolic). - Heartfield's cartoon of 1935 shows a minuscule Goebbels standing on a copy of Mein Kampf, putting out his hand in a gesture of dismissal. 'Away with these degenerate subhumans,' he says. To some this image would confirm the Nazi lie that the U.S.S.R. represented a threat to Germany, but not to loyal communists. ,', there is only a paper-thin division between thesis and antithesis; - leverage (moral and political argument) would be applied (by artists themselves) to committed artists and propagandists in order to persuade them to suppress or distort their own original imaginative impulses. Am I being useful enough? Is my work effective enough? That is because they believed their work to be a political weapon - Politically revolutionary artists hope to integrate their work into a mass struggle. But the influence of their work cannot be determined, either by the artist or by a political commissar, in advance, so it is actually =/= a weapon (effectiveness of a weapon can be estimated) - BUT, a work of art is intended to operate within a field of subjective interactions which are interminable and immeasurable. - ,', imagination, when true to its impulse, is continually and inevitably questioning the existing category of usefulness. So revolutionary artists like Heartfield have been persuaded to compromise, and to do so in vain. But Berger says we are not in a position to make moral judgements about Heartfield's integrity.

Germain Krull

-Born in East Prussia, a section of Germany that became part of Poland after World War I, photographer Germaine Krull (1897-1985) typified the international contacts and movements of artists after the war -she studied photography in Munich, absorbed the techniques promoted by Moholy-Nagy, and grasped the swift interplay of images advocated by Russian filmmaker and writer Sergei Eisenstein -she and her companion (later husband) , Dutch activist and filmmaker Joris Ivens, lived in Paris -like the French painter Fernand Leger, she celebrated industrialization as a marvelous marriage of the human body and the machine -her 1928 collection of images, Metal, was advertised as "the dance of the metal nudes" -the portfolio's cover showed a disconcerting view of the elevator wheels that lifted people to the topic of the Eiffel Tower in paris -Krull's 64 unbound prints of French and Dutch industrial sites in Metal were uncaptioned and sequenced so as to jump from soothing conventional views to slippery superimpositions -because of her dizzying dynamic angles and other techniques, many of the actual locations were unrecognizable, and had to be taken as symbols of modern life rather than depictions --although the experimental art and thought of Russia and Germany quickly reverberated throughout Europe and North America, they did not extinguish the international influence of French Cubism -for example, Germaine Krull seems to have intermingled these strands -kind of New Vision excitement photography photographers expressing your we have some images by Jermaine Krull who was a German photographer who spent some time at the Bauhaus and also traveled and worked extensively in France in 1928 she published her her photo book focusing on these interesting abstracted views of modern engineering and the machines and mechanisms so then cover features one of these giant wheels that was the flywheel for the elevator going up the Eiffel Tower on the right we see various views of these kinds of the sending metal work in plunging juice down Railway siding that seems beautiful to me this form all of which are tied together by the fact that they are using metal material of construction

Hannah Höch (Dada)

-Dada v. Anti-dada, The Beautiful Girl, Abduction (Ethnographic Museum) -uses clippings from newspapers and magazines, so some sarcasm and commercialism -very aware of edges of cut images as the cut and paste is the final work -cultural critiques -the origins of the photomontage have long been debated, but it seems that Hannah Hoch (1889-1978) and Hausmann were two of the earliest Dadaists to make such images -Hoch's large photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany) (1919) made its appearance at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin (1920) (in the center a popular dancer of the time pirouettes beneath the head of the artist Kathe Kollwitz. The head has been speared by a man in front of an elephant. The dancer's right foot rests on a giant ball-bearing. Beneath that is a young revolutionary sailor who is saying "Tretet Dada Bei" ("Join Dada"). The word "Dada" is also scattered throughout the work) -as art historian Maud Lavin observed, the diversity of mass-media sources in Hoch's picture testifies to the vast proliferation of newspapers and journals in the years following World War I, and the growing perception that mass-media images were forming a common visual culture -even though the individual images in early photomontage were generally easy to read, their combination yielded pictures whose meaning was difficult to decipher -in effect, photomontage itself was the message of change -nevertheless, some parts of Cut with the Kitchen Knife can be decoded -like American photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, Hoch engaged the theme of the New Woman -she juxtaposed images of smartly dressed contemporary women with women in traditional social roles and with such symbols of modernity as automobiles, machinery, and electric light bulbs -while she criticized contemporary politics and society's hypocrisy toward women as both workers and sexual objects, the jazzy exuberance of her compositions reveals optimism for avant-garde art and the joy of artmaking -during the 1930s, Hoch collaged pictures of objects in German ethnographic collections with symbols of Modernism, so as to contrast Western materialism and non-Western traditional practices -her photomontage series From an Ethnographic Museum produced unsettling effects by juxtaposing snippets of male and female body parts and non-Western sculpture (Monument 1: From an Ethnographic Museum) -Hoch's lover for seven years, Raoul Hausmann, was one of the few communists to insist on women's equality in any new society -member of Berlin Dada

El Lissitsky

-El Lissitzky, an architect who worked in many media, including photography, was one of the most politically committed artists -he renounced self-expression in art, along with easel painting, which he associated with a corrupt past and stagnant aesthetics -with others, Lissitzky insisted that the artist's role was now linked to industry and to reshaping everyday life -in avant-grade circles, the terms "production art" and "production artist" began being used, to indicate that the artist would employ technology in order to mold a new society -photography was favored precisely because it was the product of a machine that could be mass produced by other machines -Lissitzky's The Constructor (1924) shows the artist in his new role as builder of engineer (borrowing from two Russian art movements,Suprematism and Constructivism, both of which favored abstract geometric shapes in unshaded colors, Lissitzky superimposed an image of himself on a piece of graph paper, and layered on top a picture of his hand, uniting hand and eye in a symbol of ideal labor. Superimposing one element on another recalled the experiments of Cubism) -it features the austere geometric overlays frequently used by Russian avant-garde image-makers, who favored non-realistic, intersecting planes that flattened Renaissance perspective and thereby condemned the older art of morally bankrupt elites -in Lissitzky's image, the artist's hand fingers a compass, which seems to have drawn a perfect circle around his head; the circle forms a halo, as in a Russian religious printing -the "sainted" new Soviet artist worked with geometric shapes and signs, as well as printers' type, which emerged as primary elements in Soviet poster design and magazine illustrations -Lissitzky also designed trade exhibitions, demonstrating Soviet industrial progress -in these installations, he transformed the shape of the room by having images and text bulge out from from the wall or droop from the ceiling in Russia in 1917 they had in the Civil War that took place for a few years after the Revolution by the time we get into the twenties there is a dedication by number of the avant-garde artists and designers in Russia put a montage was an important part of this artist here whose work was Molino often vary depending on for the Montage. Koutsos on the right as using put a montage here whining put a graph of its mother graphic design elements to create an image illustrating the electrification of the entire country the elder sister image portrait called interesting when he doesn't call himself the artist it's the Constructor these Soviet artist workers contributing to Artist it's actually looked at themselves as workers contributing to the Revolution and sought to undermine traditional Notions of Art and artists because structure is really fascinating image but also it's your kind of combined with this photograph of his hand holding a compass against drawing board and so his hand emerges true the palm of hand structure of meaning of the letters of the important person because he managed to actually to spend some time at the Bauhaus went over to Germany it's been some time with the evening so he wasn't post Revolutionary Society in the Soviet Union make for some very cute differences between Sun photography

Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful), 1928

-In Europe a somewhat similar respect for straight photography is found in the work of the German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch. -His book, Die Welt ist schon ( "The World is Beautiful"), published in 1928, was hailed as the photographic counterpart of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement in painting. -The pictures were strong and direct: extreme closeups of plants and animals, lonely city streets, bold forms of industrial buildings, details of machinery, and still-life studies of their products. -The freshness of Renger-Patzsch' s vision was impressive. -Thomas Mann found his photographs "exact statements drawn from the whole and that's the way it usually is with this man who is, in his way, impassioned. The detail, the objective, is removed from the world of appearances, isolated, sharpened, made meaningful, animated. What more, I would like to ask, has art or the artist done? -Renger-Patzsch himself said, quite simply, "Let us leave art to the artist, and let us try-with photographic means-to create photographs which can stand alone because of their very photographic character-without borrowing from art." Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful) is a 1928 book of photography by German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch. A popular work at the time, Die Welt ist schön is generally considered one of the most important books of photography published in the Weimar Republic, and as an iconic example of the photography of New Objectivity.[1] Renger-Patzsch's book provoked emphatic reactions upon release: while contemporaries such as Ernst Toller and Thomas Mann praised Die Welt ist schön, it was sharply criticized by figures like Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, who felt that Renger-Patzsch's work was too beholden to a naive idea of photographic realism and ended up aestheticizing everything, thus obscuring social realities. -in particular, Teige targeted the book The World is Beautiful, by Renger-Patzsch, claiming that its concentration on formal beauty spawned a modish, socially irresponsible version of art for art's sake -originally titled Things, the book consisted of 100 photographs organized in 8 sections, including technology, architecture, and plants -Renger-Patzsch emphasized "thingness" bu choosing a view that standardized and regularized the subject -while praising the new photography for tearing the medium "loose from the grip of the petty business machinations of the studios, and from artistic dilettantism," Teige insisted that "photography did not triumph over painting in order to take its place" -he appealed for a photography that was grounded in social life, not the art gallery, and inviyted photographers to recongize the medium could be successfully practiced by amateurs -not surprisingly, Teige admitted Soviet photography, asserting that it had not lost sight of its ideological mission -"Service is the future of modern photography and its tasks will be utilitarian: to serve science, ideas, and social progress" -in effect, he called for a progressive, socially committed documentary photography -for similar reasons, Renger-Patzsch's book was also denounced by German critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), who called its style "the posture of a photography that can endow any soup-can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists" -Benajmin mocked what he called creative photography, the tendency to look for engaging visual juxtapositions that delighted the eye but ignored the mind -he maintained that taking subjects out of context, as in severe close-ups, turned photography "into a sort of art journalism" -New Vision photographer associated with which he published his second photos is most famous for his beautiful is the name of the book and see his very beautiful attractive formal Panavision of photography many of these images into them to Shan are actually Industrial in nature like this rack of Irons used to write his images of central composition Center weed view of things is sharply focused and matter-of-fact style exam fuzzies that was a dedicated formalist. He wrote The Secret of a good photograph and have it set equality is it realism let us therefore leave art to the artist and Endeavor to create system in particular to photography the reception of the world is beautiful was decidedly mixed however as many read into it celebration of formal regularity and patterns political preference order something that rang ominously in the late 1920s

Henri Cartier-Bresson

-Kertesz's joy in seizing a fleeting yet resonant visual moment influenced many 20th century photographers, including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-bresson (1908-2004) -a painter and student of art history, Cartier-Bresson recalled that he was influenced more by Surrealist theories of the irrational than by Surrealist art practice -he fastened on "the role of spontaneous expression... and of institution and, above all, the attitude of revolt" -he is legendary for describing his instantaneous composition of a scene as "the decisive moment," which he defined as "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which gave that event is proper expression -a famous example is his image of a man momentarily suspended over a rain-drenched area (behind the Gare St. Lazare) -image by very early in his career first became a photographer he was fairly closely associated with the surrealist and so strong he went on World War II and Beyond Two Become One of the world's leading photojournalist in this particular image the plaster the whole word also known as the puddle jumper behind the Lazar in Paris sort of a waste of space from the backside of the Industrial train station and we have here a space where obviously it's flooded another was a large pool of water and people in order to Traverse this puddle giant puddle have I laid down the ladder and various kinds of things to be stepping stones I guess to get across and here until we got to the point where he had to take a leak to get across the wide response of it this is literally photography and shooting fish in a barrel 3 BTU heater is the doubling that goes on this Muse on a beam character is something that is the entire image was clear one obviously is the silhouette of the leaping man which is then converted in the reflection pool water below so that's one set of doubling however everything in this in the image is doubled so we got in that on the back wall the posters and you'll see one of the posters has a figure of a leaping so silhouette of a leaping man and it's actually paired the second one is an obscured by whatever alongside of it so so there's the leaving person that's sort of technically doubles and then the doubling of that name but oh no there's more than that we've doubled leaping person is doubled yet again in her collection in the water right so we got this. Doubles of doubles it's sort of an image origami of the structure that called her attention to the very fact of representation itself so again rather than focusing strictly on perception of what one sees understanding that in the field of what one sees it's already always already in representation somehow that we are making a representation to ourselves in our very conceptions how we want to look at these things and yet again here we see a completely surrealist image which does not use any kind of manipulation or solarization order sandwiches any of that that just being able to look at this little piece of the world and recognize that in and of itself it's already generating these kind of structures that call representation itself into question

Gustav Klutsis

-Latvian-born Gustav Klutsis realized that it was imperative "to construct iconic representations for a new mass audience" -he used photomontage, assembling images and text from a variety of mass-media sources, such as newspapers and magazines -the result overturned the expectations of everyday experience and of realistic painting with arresting image collisions -Klutsis, however, insisted that his images should be understood by the illiterate as well as the educated -in Electrification of the Entire Country (1920), a giant-size Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), strides forward confidently into the future as workers on the Modernist building's roof-top cheer him on -as a medium capab;e of multiple images, photography became more central to art movements -sometimes, as in the work of Klutsis and Rodchenko in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi Party in Germany, the result was overtly political -Koutsos on the right as using put a montage here whining put a graph of its mother graphic design elements to create an image illustrating the electrification of the entire country

Russia: Post-revolutionary culture

-Revolutionary Russia and Photo-Montage: -in soviet union and germany as well as some with surrealists used photo-montage -Rodchenko avoided bellybutton photograph and took extreme angles -soviet photographers working in post-revolutionary context, so how to use photography and other art in ways to advance the cause of the revolution and public consciousness of revolution -against bellybutton because use to transform ways people can see the world*** parallel to Moholy and Roh in Germany, but context different because had revolution in Russia unlike Germany (regular industrialist) which is why Bauhaus adopts utopian socialist perspective whereas Rodchenko and those are active in russian context where had revolution and find way to communicate information and bring people along with revolutionary possibilities in what seemed like new society was possible -by 30s had socialist realism after Stalin, so many of these like Rodchenko lost "power" or whatever you want to call it Germany it's been some time with the evening so he wasn't post Revolutionary Society in the Soviet Union make for some very cute differences between Sun photography to Emily Wilkinson what are the leading photographers in the Soviet Union was Alexander rodchenko who in addition of course is also a graphic designer and sculpture but also we become in his work he railed against what he called the belly button photograph we see her on the right a journalist who's not doing a graph on the grounds of Photography is very much characterized by extreme points of view and perspective by belly button photograph was one of the popular cameras at the time was a twin lens reflex camera that had a ground glass that was on the top of the camera and focus adjust the focus to check if they're photograph using the camera in that position what you were doing was simply replicating the standard concept of the Revolutionary you like moholy-nagy and images that would fundamentally change the viewer is very much about having a revolutionary point of view as opposed to us was an attempt at a more utopian it was a matter of impressing upon his viewers that the world was different to demonstrate this to us the woman at the telephone number to see her a woman dressed in workers clothing the simple dress is Simple Head Ski using the phone in what appears to be the hallway of a building breakthroughs of the Revolution was of electricity telephone services Salon in cities for average Russians to be able to use this telephone that she's a communal telephone in the hallway of the building not a private telephone that she would have to herself but we see this comrade using technology that was helping revolutionized their world as it were the photograph of a chauffeur which is rather brilliant because we see the chauffeur peace pipe in his now and we see the pipe sticking in from the right-hand edge of the photograph here you see that he actually smoking it there but he's the photographer is viewed in the reflection of the chrome headlight on the car that he drives and so we're seeing the worker Illustrated in combination with the tool of his work with his the automobile but there's more than that seen in the reflection of the headlights if you look a little bit further and so he's a war to take the photograph of the worker reflected in the headlights of the car that he drives in any event photography possibilities of post-revolutionary society Uncle also did things like is propping to get the effects that he wants to know if she can read an article in magazine who played in front of her butt is a princess radically crop the image in concentration is abstract. Pattern set up by her head scarf and then we have the volumes of her face as she has a beautiful portrait of his mother. Not sentimental but Equal who's engaged in an intellectual activity beautiful as well so this is so then we haven't seen a number of different ways that is in Europe is brace modernism and modernity the wrong way in which they see the camera playing a significant role in the United States -In the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, some artists began to think of themselves as social Engineers, reshaping Optical experience Revolutionary Art: The Soviet Photograph -in Russia, the Revolution of 1917, which placed revolutionary socialists in power, had a deep impact on artists, particularly the avant-garde -even before the overthrow of the czar, abstraction had already become a symbol for a future untained by the past -after the Revolution, artists experimenting with Cubism and Futurism responded to the Communist Party's buoyant utopianism, expressed in The ABC of Communism (1919), which proclaimed that "within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs." -El Lissitzky, an architect who worked in many media, including photography, was one of the most politically committed artists -he renounced self-expression in art, along with easel painting, which he associated with a corrupt past and stagnant aesthetics -with others, Lissitzky insisted that the artist's role was now linked to industry and to reshaping everyday life -in avant-grade circles, the terms "production art" and "production artist" began being used, to indicate that the artist would employ technology in order to mold a new society -photography was favored precisely because it was the product of a machine that could be mass produced by other machines -Lissitzky's The Constructor (1924) shows the artist in his new role as builder of engineer (borrowing from two Russian art movements,Suprematism and Constructivism, both of which favored abstract geometric shapes in unshaded colors, Lissitzky superimposed an image of himself on a piece of graph paper, and layered on top a picture of his hand, uniting hand and eye in a symbol of ideal labor. Superimposing one element on another recalled the experiments of Cubism) -it features the austere geometric overlays frequently used by Russian avant-garde image-makers, who favored non-realistic, intersecting planes that flattened Renaissance perspective and thereby condemned the older art of morally bankrupt elites -in Lissitzky's image, the artist's hand fingers a compass, which seems to have drawn a perfect circle around his head; the circle forms a halo, as in a Russian religious printing -the "sainted" new Soviet artist worked with geometric shapes and signs, as well as printers' type, which emerged as primary elements in Soviet poster design and magazine illustrations -Lissitzky also designed trade exhibitions, demonstrating Soviet industrial progress -in these installations, he transformed the shape of the room by having images and text bulge out from from the wall or droop from the ceiling -many Soviety artists were also writers and theorists addressing national and international audiences -Latvian-born Gustav Klutsis realized that it was imperative "to construct iconic representations for a new mass audience" -he used photomontage, assembling images and text from a variety of mass-media sources, such as newspapers and magazines -the result overturned the expectations of everyday experience and of realistic painting with arresting image collisions -Klutsis, however, insisted that his images should be understood by the illiterate as well as the educated -in Electrification of the Entire Country (1920), a giant-size Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), strides forward confidently into the future as workers on the Modernist building's roof-top cheer him on -the prospect of a revolutionary art was eagerly taken up by Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956), a Russian painter and sculptor who had absorbed the geometric abstractions of cubism and who valued the process of collage, pioneered by the Cubists in the decade before World War I -as his political activity increased in the new arts organizations initiated by the Soviet government in its early years, Rodchenko investigated the role art might play in society -he resolved to make art less theoretical and more practical -with other artists, he went to factories to learn design needs first hand, ahe he conceived posters, fabrics, and furniture -Rodchenko wholeheartedly accepted photography because he felt it freed artists from inherited aesthetic ideas, especially perspective and the other techniques used to render the world as it is, rather than as it might be -he promoted the notion that new concepts could not be expressed in old media, and was a leading proponent of faktura, the idea prominent in Soviet art theory that an artist should discover a medium's distinctive capabilities by experimenting with its inherent qualities -looking at the work of photographers who traveled to foreign countries, Rodchenko scoffed, "They photograph with museum eyes, the eyes of art history" -Rodchenko's hope for new media such as film and photography was enhanced by looking at German art and fashion magazines, such as Woman, Young World, and Modern Illustrated Journal, which featured experimental German photography -in turn, Rodchenko's work appeared in the Russian magazine LEF (Left Front of the Arts), a left-wing arts magazine founded by poet Vladimir Maiakovskii -in 1923, Rodchenko gathered images from the picture press, and also commissioned a series of photographs from another photographer -he joined these images to make photo montage illustrations for Maiakovskii's poem "About This" (use class of incongruous objects to evoke the poet's seething anxiety about the absence of his lover) -these images are visually arresting but it is hard to see how uninitiated viewers could have interpreted their symbolic meanings -the post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde advocated making images in such a way as to obstruct habits of seeing -odd camera angles, unrecognizable close-ups, multiple exposures, and confused perspective all served to "make strange" the expected appearance of the world -in the mid-1920s, Rodchenko learned to make his own photographs and moved from photomontage to straight photography (Untitled, (Walking Figure), 1928) -nevertheless, he continued to disparage "belly button" camerawork-- that is, the conventional, balanced picture taken with a camera held near the waistline while the photographer peered into the viewing screen -in the years immediately after the Revolution, the Soviety government courted experimental artists in its search for innovative methods of mass communication -but by the early 1930s, the romance turned sour -official policy shifted from avant-garde art-- seen as intelectual, bourgeois, and thus part of the capitalist system-- and instead promoted Socialist Realism, that is, a conventionally realistic style used as a vehicle for rousing propaganda messages that could be universally understood by the workers -as the avant-garde was losing official sanction, Rodchenko began the huge official task of photographing the construction of the White Sea Canal, or Stalin Canal (1931-33) -using a less startlingly inventive approach than in his earlier work, he produced about three thousand photographs, some of which were published in a special 1933 edition of USSR in Construction, a magazine intended to show Soviet progress, especially to audiences abroad -tellingly, Rodchenko did not focus on the use of forced labor, or the deaths of thousand of workers at the site-- subjects forbidden by the propaganda controls enforced in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership in the 1930

photomontage

-The process of combining parts of various photographs in one photograph. photomontage, assembling images and text from a variety of mass-media sources, such as newspapers and magazines -used by Latvian-born Gustav Klutsis and Rodchenko -Berlin Dadaists adopted photomontage as a key medium -often the initial Klebebild or "paste picture" was photographed, producing a more finished look, and preparing the image for reproduction in one of the many avant-garde magazines -the origins of the photomontage have long been debated, but it seems that Hannah Hoch (1889-1978) and Hausmann were two of the earliest Dadaists to make such images -Hoch's large photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany) (1919) made its appearance at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin (1920) (in the center a popular dancer of the time pirouettes beneath the head of the artist Kathe Kollwitz. The head has been speared by a man in front of an elephant. The dancer's right foot rests on a giant ball-bearing. Beneath that is a young revolutionary sailor who is saying "Tretet Dada Bei" ("Join Dada"). The word "Dada" is also scattered throughout the work) -as art historian Maud Lavin observed, the diversity of mass-media sources in Hoch's picture testifies to the vast proliferation of newspapers and journals in the years following World War I, and the growing perception that mass-media images were forming a common visual culture -even though the individual images in early photomontage were generally easy to read, their combination yielded pictures whose meaning was difficult to decipher -in effect, photomontage itself was the message of change -nevertheless, some parts of Cut with the Kitchen Knife can be decoded -like American photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, Hoch engaged the theme of the New Woman -she juxtaposed images of smartly dressed contemporary women with women in traditional social roles and with such symbols of modernity as automobiles, machinery, and electric light bulbs -while she criticized contemporary politics and society's hypocrisy toward women as both workers and sexual objects, the jazzy exuberance of her compositions reveals optimism for avant-garde art and the joy of artmaking -during the 1930s, Hoch collaged pictures of objects in German ethnographic collections with symbols of Modernism, so as to contrast Western materialism and non-Western traditional practices -her photomontage series From an Ethnographic Museum produced unsettling effects by juxtaposing snippets of male and female body parts and non-Western sculpture (Monument 1: From an Ethnographic Museum) -Hoch's lover for seven years, Raoul Hausmann, was one of the few communists to insist on women's equality in any new society -more subtle than his copious political writing, Hausmann's photomontage images included his contribution to the 1920 Dada Fair, Tatlin at Home -this photomontage was more an exercise in freewheeling mental associations and concern for artistic form than a penetrating portrait or social critique -for example, Hausmann explained that he added machinery, including an automobile steering wheel, to the main figure's head because he was interested in portraying a man who had machines for brains -the man with his pockets turned inside out was included because Hausmann fancied that Tatlin could not be rich -like many photomontagists, Hausmann painted parts of the picture, such as the background -another Berlin Dadaist, George Grosz (1893-1959), one of the most politically active artists to emerge from the Berlin Dada group, was also a pioneer of photomontage -Grosz's photomontages have a plainly discernible message, expressed in an apparently spontaneous accumulation of images and texts -also at the Bauhaus was Austrian-born designer and photographer Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), whose design for the first cover of the institution's publication, Bauhaus, was a photomontage -Bayer's post-Bauhaus career included the design of an infamous Nazi brochure, which demonstrated the extent to which photomontage was not a technique intrinsically wedded to progressive politics, but a style whose aesthetic features could serve any political persuasion Photomontage or Photocollage -narrowly speaking, photocollage began with the cut and paste work of album makers such ad Lady Filmer and combination printing of photographers like Oscar Rejlander -but the anti-establishment photographic experiments that originated in both Soviet and German experimental photography had different social roots and dissimilar social aims from these Victorian forebears -photomontage originated in Germany, but was adopted in Russia soon after WWI, through artists' visits and through magazines -the avant-garde Dada movement, initiated by artists who took refuge in Switzerland during the war, spread to Berlin, and from there to Moscow -experimental artists cut pictures from magazines and newspapers and pasted them together in composite images whose jumbled scale and perspective challenged conventional expectations (George Grosz and John Heartfield, Life and Activity in the Universal City at Five Past Twelve) -these collages (from the French word for "glue") were sometimes photographed so that the unique first image could be printed in multiple versions -Soviet experimental artists called such images not photocollages but photomontages -the word "montage" has various sources; in silent film, for example, it specified rapid succession of images that indicated a change of place or the transition of ideas -the Berlin Dadaist Hausmann wrote that the group agreed on the term "photomontage" because of "our aversion at playing the artist and, thinking of ourselves as engineers (hence our preference for working-men's overalls) we meant to construct, to assemble (montieren) our works -experimental artists used to word "photomontage" almost exclusively after World War I -although a photomontage may resemble a Cubist painting, on to which such materials as tickets and menus have been pasted, experimental artists in Germany and Russia aimed to use such materials in a different way -the jumbled appearance of photomontage was more than formal inventiveness; it was a token of the quick changes and disruptions of modern life that seemed, in the period immediately after WWI and the Russian Revolution, to promise progressive social change -reflecting on the evolution of photomontage, one of its inventors, Raoul Hausmann, noted that "over time the technique of photomontage has undergone considerable simplification, forced upon it" by application in "political or commercial propaganda"

André Breton

-The surrealists did not rely on recent analysis or sober calculation on the contrary I saw the forces of Reason blocking the access routes to the imagination their efforts to tap the creative powers of the unconscious set breton and his companions on a path that carry them through the territory of the images obtained by such means weather visual or literary will prize precisely to the degree that they capture these moments of psychic intensity in provocative forms of unrestrained convulsive beauty memory of the American photographer was involved with the dying Embers of Dada in Paris when he first arrived in 19 21 22 which Dan evolve into the surrealist movement led by Andre Brett Hall was never a member of the movement but he was eventually sort of The Unofficial photographe -peaking of the novel that's another place for photography was used you see hear a photograph by man ray of this object which was described in Andre Brett Holmes novel that mad love others publishing 1937. Seuss actually the thing that was designed to make a shoe horn to help you get your heel into a shoe or Boot and then on the end of it the end of the handle is this little boot which again this is another Muse on a bean so the boots at the shoe with the heel boots is the certain micro version of the form of the whole thing so that the the spoon end of it is sort of like those foot shoe and then the food itself is like the heel and Sabrett home discusses this in the novel using photographs and the photographs in his books tend to be pretty boring looking photographs will be in the city where the action is taken place on a particular square or in a building with his guy is something about the use of these photographs none of which are in a manipulated or particularly bizarre or something but is it's in the context of the writing in the context of the novel that they serve as a kind of material documentation of the reality of the places and the things that he's talking about at the same time that there then elevated into being apart of surrealist art -Andre Breton, one of the leaders of Paris Dada, praised Ernst and lauded his photography, relating it to the Dada practice of automatic writing -this entailed writing or speaking a haphazard sequence of words to evade the censorship of the rational mind: "Automatic writing is a true photography of thought" -Breton's curiosity about psychic states led him toward psychology, especially the theories of Sigmund Freud, which suggested that human behavior is motivated by forces and desires hidden deep within the human psyche, which individuals and society are generally reluctant to acknowledge -around 1924, Breton rejected the anarchism of Dada, which relied on an ability (difficult to sustain indefinitely) to shock, disturb, or outrage viewers -he sought a more constructive program that would still be based on the power of the unconscious and irrational mind -this led to the founding of the Surrealist movement, of which Breton became one of the major theorists -the Surrealist movement was born in Paris in the mid-1920s -unlike Dada, which always remained individualistic, Surrealism was a self-proclaimed movement -Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto, published in on October 15, 1924, announced the primacy of the irrational and the belief in a truth beyond realism -ow as the leader of the dissidents to realize there was a very large break which resulted in Breton writing the second surrealist Manifesto excommunicated from the movement including the writers that I had a philosophy that was very much organized around the baseness of matter and using that as a primary organizing principle in his thought

Eugène Atget

-attracted to the bohemian life of Paris in the 1920s, Berenice Abbot worked for Man Ray from 1924 to 1926 -while in paris, she also studied with Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a photographer who roamed Paris and its environs, producing about ten thousand prints in the early 20th century (Cafe, Avenue de la Grand-Armee) -using a box camera and glass negatives, Atget resisted the then fashionable Pictorialist photographic style, and compiled clear objective images, which he called "documents" -the Paris Surrealists found Atget's "documents" unsettling and evocative, and briefly put the reluctant Atget forward as an instinctive voice for their philosophy -by contrast, Abbot admired his methodical approach -after his death, she acquired Atget's images, which in time became part of the collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art -The growing appreciation of straight photography brought about the recognition in the late 1920s of photographers of the older generation whose work had been overlooked by the pictorialists. -Jean Eugene Auguste Atget was virtually unknown when he died in 1927. He never showed in a salon. Not a single one of the thousands of photographs he had taken since 1898 of his beloved Paris had been reproduced in a photographic magazine. -Painters had found his street scenes helpful documents, and the Surrealist artists, ever sensitive to the melancholy that a good photograph can so powerfully evoke, reproduced a few of his pictures in 1926 in their magazine La Revolution surrealiste. -"For some time he had had the ambition to create a collection of all that which both in Paris and its surroundings was artistic and picturesque," wrote his friend Andre Calmettes. -A great deal of his work was photographing the historic buildings of Paris in detail. He made a series of photographs of iron grill work, another of the fountains of Paris. He photographed the statues in the park at Versailles, and statues on the medieval churches in Paris. These he sold to the Parisian museums. -But he did not limit himself to works of art and historic monuments: he photographed the face of Paris in all its aspects -Each of these categories is a series comprising hundreds of photographs. For Atget was in truth, as Calmettes wrote, a collector. He is, too, a picture maker, un imagier, in the words of his friend. -His technique was of the simplest: a view camera lLways used on a tripod-for plates 18 x 24 centimeters in size. -His lens was a rapid rectilinear, used well stopped down. Its focal length is not known, but it must have been fairly short, for so many of his pictures show steep perspective and the tops of many of the negatives show bare glass where the image fell off. -He printed the glass plates by daylight on aristotype printing-out paper, toning the prints with gold chloride. -Atget' s technical approach was, therefore, that of the nineteenth century and, looking at his prints, it is often hard to believe that he did most of his work after 1900. -He seldom made an exposure that could be called a snapshot: moving objects are often blurred, and when he photographed people it is obvious that he asked them to pose. In an Atget photograph every detail stands forth with a clarity that is remarkable. -Among the thousands of photographs Atget took, there are those that reach beyond the record and approach the lyric, for he had a remarkable vision. -He could find a human quality where no human being appears. His interiors lead one to feel that the people whose home he is photographing have just stepped behind the camera while he focuses and makes his exposure and will return the moment the lens is closed. -Out-of-doors he worked early in the morning to avoid being disturbed by the curious, and his pictures have the atmosphere of early light. -His work has no references to any graphic medium other than photography. -was a Parisian photographer who started his commercial studio early in the twentieth century and special most of his business making photographs of architectural details Edible Arrangements in buildings and things that were used as reference for Architects and others I changed made a point of a walk through the streets of Paris regularly set up his camera to photograph your shop fronts buildings and things that he encountered on the street this emphasis on Soto street photography in a sense was something that was very appealing to the surrealist near the end of his life he was discovered as his photography studio was literally a half a block away from man Ray's studio in Montana and Man Ray had an assistant named Ernie's Abbott herself a really interesting photographer Abbott saw this sign hanging off of the building just up the street and I'm saying you Shane Akshay photographer and it was a treat so she went and introduced herself to him to the old man and found that he had just thousands of glass plate negatives of all these kind of interesting things and so she introduced me to Akshay and in relatively short order he was it that he was sort of another the surrealist before the fact that they had discovered so as you look at these photographs by Akshay this just gives you a tiny sample of his you can see the surrealist moments there is a surrealist I shall I think these things that they really liked so for instance in Cabrio Tumblr on the left is you can see the charger for himself actually reflected in the window so that's his camera with a tripod there's a person inside the door who's looking out through the window of the door a little bit blurred partly because of thinking the class the window and partly because of the length of the exposure and it creates is kind of funny combination of the famous photograph and the photographer on the right we have a shop window on the Avenue take over their presentation of men's clothing mannequins who are strange-looking and then collapsed selection of the window glass with the reflection of the building across the street and then of course in the middle of it we have this figure this mannequin wearing the suit but who has no head which seems to be a pretty surreal kind of moment with a cheese permission Man Ray borrowed this image of a group of people observing a solar eclipse from 1912 that made which was then published on the cover of the surrealist magazine just got a year before last shape has two way despite protestations that these are simply documents I make a change rejection of artistic subconsciousness combined with his pictures of an old often hauntingly deserted Paris appealed surrealist today I changed my less as a documentary photographer and more for his modern perspective which offered a new and it's hives humorous interpretation of the city and in fact of the City of Paris -Eugene Atget discovered by Man Ray and old pictures of city of Paris inspiring to surrealism; straight forward but in context of surrealist revolution gives new context

John Heartfield (Dada)

-didn't use camera but constructed images from pre-existing photographs or added text -his photomontages, unlike Hoch's, were meant to be published in AIZ and other books, so he made sure to airbrush and smooth the images to give it a unified presence -mocking Nationalism, bourgeois, and Nazism -ex: Pan-German (discussed by Berger in Photo Montage Essay), German X-Mas Tree, Hitler saluting and being funded by industrialists -kind of same vibe as the Daily Show with news reformed to show the ridiculousness -tension between the original image and the reframing Berlin Dadaist, more vigorously revolutionary in political beliefs founded the Berlin group in 1919 --experimental artists cut pictures from magazines and newspapers and pasted them together in composite images whose jumbled scale and perspective challenged conventional expectations (George Grosz and John Heartfield, Life and Activity in the Universal City at Five Past Twelve)

Surrealism

-emerged in interwar period; not happy with stifling conventions of bourgeois society -surrealism challenged that by inventing new ways of looking -imaginative from unconscious; release the "id" and stuff that emerges when you dream -photography is ostensibly objective and indexical, but many things you are unconscious of when photographing -a kind of "optical unconscious" in photography; when snap the shutter, you can access the world in an unconscious state that opens itself up to chance (ex: solarization accidentally discovered) -surrealism: very specific aesthetic ideas (Man Ray not an official member, but made work that fit within; maybe have been concerned about being kicked out due to being an ex-pat) rayographs/photograms announced movement in 1924 Andre Breton from dada movement to form surrealism -riffing on freud's idea of the unconscious that we get glimpses of when we dream; surrealists want to release that hidden energy of the unconscious and break down the bourgeois society of conventions and critique that -photography was important -perception versus representation; think about as representation (this is not a pipe because it's a picture that looks like a pipe, but not the thing itself); philosophical question -solarization (sabattier effect) used by manray; reintroduction of light when image in middle of development process; makes otherwordly/dreamlike -surrealism was officially launched as a publication of poet first Manifesto to realism in October of 1924 among writers And it took some time for it to develop as a Visual Arts Movement as well The surrealists did not rely on recent analysis or sober calculation on the contrary I saw the forces of Reason blocking the access routes to the imagination their efforts to tap the creative powers of the unconscious set breton and his companions on a path that carry them through the territory of the images obtained by such means weather visual or literary will prize precisely to the degree that they capture these moments of psychic intensity in provocative forms of unrestrained convulsive beauty memory -we often think of surrealism as a movement dedicated to Fantastic Dreamscapes as one sees in paintings by Salvador Dali the vast majority of surrealist Explorations are about engaging the everyday -one of the things that binds together the work of the surrealist writers poets and Painters and photographers and performance artist is this continuous questioning of the frame of representation of how it is that we think we understand things and asking whether we might in fact think about that very differently photography came to occupy a central role in surrealist activity in the works of Man Ray and others who often use procedures such as Double Exposure combination printing Montage in solarization they dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality since the camera is always pointed at an actual person or thing that's being documented by the lens to make it seem strange or other was one of the fundamental moves involved in surrealist photography taking something real and asking us to see it poetically through surrealist size an important concept for the surrealists was the psychological The Uncanny and idea first discussed by Sigmund Freud The Uncanny in German is called the unheimlich the Unholy unhomely something that's familiar homely as a familiar Furniture of the world but that seems strange and is made strange this is one of the fundamental functions and dreams if you've ever had a dream where oh I was at my house but it wasn't my house that all the sudden additional rooms appear or things that totally don't belong to the house happened to be there that would be a classic instance of The Uncanny so the surrealist job is really taking the familiar and inviting us in various ways to reframe it to understand the play of representation and the play of meaning that's available in even the most conventionally scene sorts of things -a part of what surrealist photographers were looking for at the world and use the camera and kind of representation available via photography to use it as proof that reality itself is subject to many constructions that we oppose on it one particular construction that one sees quite frequently in many surrealist photographs is something that's been called the mise en abyme Surrealist Photography -the Surrealist movement was born in Paris in the mid-1920s -unlike Dada, which always remained individualistic, Surrealism was a self-proclaimed movement -Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto, published in on October 15, 1924, announced the primacy of the irrational and the belief in a truth beyond realism -surrealism was deeply indebted to Freud's theory of the unconscious and the methods he proposed for revealing a person's unconscious desires, notably dream analysis and free-association sequences of words and ideas -rather than emphasizing social change on the state level, the Surrealists advocated the transformation of human perception and experience through great contact with the inner world of imagination -photography was central to Surrealist practice -in theory, at least, making photographs could be the visual equivalent of free association and other methods of side-stepping the monitoring rational mind -some Surrealists pointed their cameras haphazardly, recording whatever happened to be in front of the lens -other efforts were more purposeful, such as Many Ray's experiments with the photogram, or rayograph (Abstract Composition) -his untitled rayographs, featuring unlikely conjunctions of mundane, recognixable objects, such as a knife and comb, were published as The Delicious Fields (1922) -Tzara contributed a preface cleverely titled "Photography Inside Out" referring both to the reversal of tones in the rayographs, and to the idea that photographic practice might be turned on its head -Brassai (1899-1984), born Gyula Halasz in Brasso, Transylvania, the town from which he adapted his name, was working as a correspondent for both Hungarian and German newspapers when he met the Paris Surrealists -his 1933 series Involuntary Sculpture shows Surrealist influence in its emphasis on chance discoveries -most Surrealist photography alludes to psychological intimations and innuendoes, a scenario in which something has just happened or is about to happen, as in Many Ray's untitled image for the Surrealist publication Minotaure (used ominous shadows to suggest a woman's upper torso was transforming itself into the head of a bull as Greek mythology had the Minotaur has a half-man half-bull) -like several early 20th century art groups, the Surrealists believed that "primitive" art and myth bypassed conscious, rational thought to reach into the fertile unconscious -in response to the French government's 1931 international Paris Exposition Coloniale, several Surrealists joined forces to curate a section of the anti-imperialist exhibition "The Truth about the Colonies", which emphasized the originality and spiritual integrity of art created by indigenous peoples living in Africa and Indochina -forbidden sensualitt and sexuality were frequent Surrealist topics -Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), born in the German-dominated area of Poland called Silesia, encountered the Berlin Dadaists while studying engineering -following the well-trodden path to paris in 1924, he came in touch with the Surrealists -after a number of eerie personal incidents, including attending a performance of Jacques Offenbach's (1819-1880) opera The Tales of Hoffmann, about a beloved automated doll that is demolished, he was inspired to create his own dolls and photograph them (Doll (La poupee); mismatched and twisted mannequin body parts; grotesque figures scrtuinied for insights into his personal Oedipal conflicts, and read as a sophisticatedd retaliatory response to the fair-haired strereotypes of the normal-- Aryan-- body, celebrated in Nazi propaganda pictures) -Belgian-born Raoul Ubac (1910-1985) was a technically experimental as his sometime collaborator Man Ray -both made solarized prints, a technique Man Ray originally investigated with Berenice Abbot and Lee Miller, who were his studio assistants at different times -solarization involves briefly exposing a print or negative to light during the development process -the result is a reversal of tones, especially along the edges of objects -sometimes called edge reversal, solarization is unpredictable, which made it a favorite technique of the Surrealists -Ubac also developed a technique called brulage, or burning, in which film emulsion was melted to produce swirling shapes (La Conciliabule; brulage depicts slippery-looking dissolving forms that signal the transitory quality of human identity that gives print shimmering, dreamlike quality) -attracted to the bohemian life of Paris in the 1920s, Berenice Abbot worked for Man Ray from 1924 to 1926 -while in paris, she also studied with Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a photographer who roamed Paris and its environs, producing about ten thousand prints in the early 20th century (Cafe, Avenue de la Grand-Armee) -using a box camera and glass negatives, Atget resisted the then fashionable Pictorialist photographic style, and compiled clear objective images, which he called "documents" -the Paris Surrealists found Atget's "documents" unsettling and evocative, and briefly put the reluctant Atget forward as an instinctive voice for their philosophy -by contrast, Abbot admired his methodical approach -after his death, she acquired Atget's images, which in time became part of the collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art -male Surrealist painters and photographers often used female forms as symbols of the primitive, the mysterious, and the erotic -as recent feminist critics have pointed out, they also pictured women's bodies caged, distorted, or dismembered, as if they were primal forces to be trapped, observed, or punished --the women artists in Surrealist circles did not generally adopt this iconography -Painter Dora Maar (1909-1997), often unjustly remembered only as a lover of Picasso and as a subject in his paintings, was also a member of Man Ray's circle and an experimental photographer with a knack for contriving unsettling images (Pere Ubu, close up shot of armadillo makes look extraordinary and disturbing) -Claude Cahun (1894-1954), an activist writer and photographer involved with Surrealism in paris during the 1930s, made self-portraits exploring shifting subjective moements and female gender identity; born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, Cahun adopted the first name of Claude, which in French can be either a male or female name -The Surrealist sensibility peristsed well beyond its historical high point in the 1920s and 1930s, although shorn of its early radicalism and intense psychologizing -Brassai's recognition that the extraordinary always prowls close to the ordinary informs his book of photographs Paris by Night (1933), which teems with people who exist at the twilight of respectable society -to many photographic artists, such outsiders as vagrants and prostitutes represented freedom and nonconformity -Brassai's Paris by Night carried no message of social reform or personal redemption, but showed such people of the night as "Bijou" (Jewel), who relished the extremes of life -for Andre Kertesz (1894-1985), a Hungarian-born photographer and mentor to his Paris friend Brassai, Surrealist distortion of the human figure was a short-lived, if much discussed, experiment (Distortion #102) -nevertheless, the Surrealist feeling for the magic of coincidence and presence of the mysterious in everyday life stayed with him throughout his career, as in Meudon -Kertesz's joy in seizing a fleeting yet resonant visual moment influenced many 20th century photographers, including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-bresson (1908-2004) -a painter and student of art history, Cartier-Bresson recalled that he was influenced more by Surrealist theories of the irrational than by Surrealist art practice -he fastened on "the role of spontaneous expression... and of institution and, above all, the attitude of revolt" -he is legendary for describing his instantaneous composition of a scene as "the decisive moment," which he defined as "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which gave that event is proper expression -a famous example is his image of a man momentarily suspended over a rain-drenched area (behind the Gare St. Lazare) -Surrealism also targeted the human unconscious, and explored the significance of change and the dream state

Brassaï

-exemplifies formless -widely celebrated for his signature photographs of Parisian nightlife and especially his book of collected photographs Paris By Night which involved some technically challenging very long exposures out of the street and in the dark Russ height and counter Paris at street level and an unfamiliar places he often saw Beauty in the mundane or the overlooked and forgotten which was very much a part of the surrealist project this real is understanding of Photography turned on more than just the mediums facility and fabricating uncanny images and just as important was another discovery that even the most prosaic photographs filtered through the prism of surrealist sensibility might easily be dislodged from its usual contacts and reverently assign your reverently assigned a new role anthropological. -Brassai (1899-1984), born Gyula Halasz in Brasso, Transylvania, the town from which he adapted his name, was working as a correspondent for both Hungarian and German newspapers when he met the Paris Surrealists -his 1933 series Involuntary Sculpture shows Surrealist influence in its emphasis on chance discoveries -Brassai's recognition that the extraordinary always prowls close to the ordinary informs his book of photographs Paris by Night (1933), which teems with people who exist at the twilight of respectable society -to many photographic artists, such outsiders as vagrants and prostitutes represented freedom and nonconformity -Brassai's Paris by Night carried no message of social reform or personal redemption, but showed such people of the night as "Bijou" (Jewel), who relished the extremes of life

Lee Miller

-helped discover solarization by accident; man ray's Studio assistant and model and lover Lee Miller who accidentally exposed some images in developer bath with light in the middle of the process and once they recognized that this was an interesting fact they then work to turn it into a technique and in fact kept secret from everyone else for a few years -They were lovers and at the same time people and teacher as Lee learned The Art of Photography undermanray supervision. Their relationship was the most complex a man raised life. Working closely together led to competition andtension. -Man took a photograph of Lee. And when he saw the negative he was very disappointedwith it and he just got it if you throw it away. - lee fished it out of the rubbish bin and shemade a series of prints and then she took it to man right. Beautiful and he signed his name to.That provokes a fight because normally they didn't worry aboutthis kind of thing but whose photograph was it was ... it man's because he made the original image was Lee. She had saved the discarded image and made the print. -Frozen Bean: This painting is called the largest artist means the artistplace I think it's very much more revealing than Man ...Ray probably ever intended to be the fact that heis playing.Lees hair.Image in with his other possessions in the environment officestudio and I think this speaks of his tremendous desire.Possess. As if she was almost an object like the otherthings in his Studio. -Gradually their relationship came apart. Believing in sexual Freedomas well as in her future career leave again to ... have affairs and strayed from the studio man raised diaryand letters from this turbulent time reflect his anguish at ... the prospect of losing Lee. What is please wearto no avail. He learned that Lee was returning ... to New York to set up her own photographic studio. -in response, Man Ray had himself. Draft in a mocksuicide attempt complete with a cigarette loaded pistol. Adult ...diversion of spurned love. Gone but never forgotten Lisasince remained. For two years Man Ray worked to ...create his most ambitious painting in Amish to her. It was called a little bit upset about trois there'sa marker Observatory time for lovers.In the lower left-hand corner of the painting he transformedthe observatory near the studio where the couple have lived ... together. The famous man red lips blood l'observatoire. The most wonderful thing is the way that they arelike the entwined forms of Two Lovers.Pulisic thing for me is the way that they aretilted and flying freely. -still at Lee Miller's Iwith the basis for his haunting assemblage of a metronome ...with a forbidding title object to be destroyed.Take a photograph of one who has been locked butit seemed no more Man Ray

Franz Roh

-in 1929 molinaro's works with Frantz Road writer and critic to organize a large exhibition called film historians especially known as fifo this was a large expedition in 1929 in shift car that then travels after this International exhibition of the German air-cooled organization that there were newspaper photographs there were images by it was an exploration of the possibilities of film and photography in the modern world and the new avenues that they allowed us to see as a media and so it was a celebration of all of that with moholy-nagy there's less of as so much as it is to understand that these new tools the camera movie camera could enable us to see the world in a radically new modern sort of way it was utterly in keeping with the names of the Bauhaus engage Photography in this fashion and it's while there are certain kind of strong formal elements in these photographs --some critics decried the commercialization of the Modernist style -Karel Teige (1900-1951) angrily observed that "film und Foto," as well as the 1930 Munich exhibition "Das Lichtbild" (The Photograph) propagated a visual fashion emptied of its initial social activism -he noted the tendency in such popular books as Es Kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here Cones the New Photographer!) by writer and filmmaker Werner Graeff (1901-1978), and the triple-titled Foto-Auge=Oeil et photo=Photo-eye, a 1929 compilation of 76 contemporary photographs edited by photographer-critic Franz Roh (1890-1965) and proponent of experimental typography Jan Tschichold (1902-1974)

Albert Renger-Patzsch

-in capitalist countries such as Germany, Modernist chic sold upscale products -speculating on the effectiveness of advertising photography in 1930, German writer Willi Warstat concluded that "the public simply believes without reservation that the photographic representation of an object is truer and more real than any artist's graphic representation" -Warstat maintained that advertisers must take advantage of that illusion of truth -advertising photographs in fact presented goods as more than they were, endorsing them with suggestions of sexual allure and financial success -through advertising, the product became a commodity favored not because of its function, but because it pledged to gratify human desires the experimental look remained closely associated with dapper newness and swanky modernity -for example, the intense close-up advertisements of German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) resembled his art photographs (Snake Head) by zeroing in on the repetitive patterns of rows of commodities, ranging from coffee beans to bathtubs -Teige targeted the book The World is Beautiful, by Renger-Patzsch, claiming that its concentration on formal beauty spawned a modish, socially irresponsible version of art for art's sake -originally titled Things, the book consisted of 100 photographs organized in 8 sections, including technology, architecture, and plants -Renger-Patzsch emphasized "thingness" bu choosing a view that standardized and regularized the subject -while praising the new photography for tearing the medium "loose from the grip of the petty business machinations of the studios, and from artistic dilettantism," Teige insisted that "photography did not triumph over painting in order to take its place" -he appealed for a photography that was grounded in social life, not the art gallery, and inviyted photographers to recongize the medium could be successfully practiced by amateurs -not surprisingly, Teige admitted Soviet photography, asserting that it had not lost sight of its ideological mission -"Service is the future of modern photography and its tasks will be utilitarian: to serve science, ideas, and social progress" -in effect, he called for a progressive, socially committed documentary photography -for similar reasons, Renger-Patzsch's book was also denounced by German critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), who called its style "the posture of a photography that can endow any soup-can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists" -Benajmin mocked what he called creative photography, the tendency to look for engaging visual juxtapositions that delighted the eye but ignored the mind -he maintained that taking subjects out of context, as in severe close-ups, turned photography "into a sort of art journalism" -in Germany the funniest was the New Vision photographer associated with which he published his second photos is most famous for his beautiful is the name of the book and see his very beautiful attractive formal Panavision of photography many of these images into them to Shan are actually Industrial in nature like this rack of Irons used to write his images of central composition Center weed view of things is sharply focused and matter-of-fact style exam fuzzies that was a dedicated formalist. He wrote The Secret of a good photograph and have it set equality is it realism let us therefore leave art to the artist and Endeavor to create system in particular to photography the reception of the world is beautiful was decidedly mixed however as many read into it celebration of formal regularity and patterns political preference order something that rang ominously in the late 1920s

Film und Photo exhibition (FiFo), Stuttgart 1929

-instead of questioning if photography is art like earlier generations, instead focus on how this medium was revolutionizing human beings and what they could see and know (ex: x-rays, news photography) -in 1929 molinaro's works with Frantz Road writer and critic to organize a large exhibition called film historians especially known as fifo this was a large expedition in 1929 in shift car that then travels after this International exhibition of the German air-cooled organization that there were newspaper photographs there were images by it was an exploration of the possibilities of film and photography in the modern world and the new avenues that they allowed us to see as a media and so it was a celebration of all of that -Moholy-Nagy was influential in organizing the international 1929 "Film und Foto" exhibition held in Stuttgart, Germany, to which he contributed 97 photographs. Photomontages, and photograms -at Fifo, as the exhibition was called, viewers could see how far photography had changed from the fuzzy look and rural subjects of the turn-of-the-century Pictorialism -collectively, the Fifo photographs dwelled on the urban-industrial environment, emphasizing form and texture -borrowing the name of a contemporary German art movement, observers described such work as exemplifying the New Objectivity -more imprecise terms such as "new Vision", "Modernist Photography," or "New Photography," were also used to denote the emphasis placed on industrial subjects, close-ups, odd angles, and repeated visual patterns -the depoliticizing of experimental photography at Fifo was not an overt, organized effort -in fact, the show seemed progressive in its inclusion of a wide variety of work, ranging beyond art to x-rays, photomicrographs, press photographs, and advertising -yet the continuous repetition of the style in newspapers and advertisements dulled its newness -the art director for Conde Nast publications, M. F. Agha (1896-1978), shrewdly remarked, "Modernistic photography is easily recognized by its subject matter"

Man Ray

-ontinuous questioning of the frame of representation of how it is that we think we understand things and asking whether we might in fact think about that very differently photography came to occupy a central role in surrealist activity in the works of Man Ray and others who often use procedures such as Double Exposure combination printing Montage in solarization they dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality since the camera is always pointed at an actual person or thing that's being documented by the lens to make it seem strange or other was one of the fundamental moves involved in surrealist photography taking something real and asking us to see it poetically through surrealist -Photograph by Man Ray makes liberal use of something known as solarization or more technically the sabatier effect when a photographic print or as in this case negative is in the process of development and is really exposed to light it creates this very strange effect in which the tones are reversed by the edges of the object being represented so you see that line that serve defines the edge of the woman's arm and torso and leg with sore white lipstick black and black lips to White this is something that was discovered apparently accidentally by a man ray's Studio assistant and model and lover Lee Miller who accidentally exposed some images in developer bath with light in the middle of the process and once they recognized that this was an interesting fact they then work to turn it into a technique and in fact kept secret from everyone else for a few years did not reveal to others in the movement how exactly to to solarizations until I think around 1935 so became sort of Man Ray title of this image the Primacy of matter over thought is a kind of complex and sort of a double entendre and an inside joke regarding various schools of thought at that moment in the surrealist movement when an above it went under a brat all was pressing for a rather Transcendence had a romantic notion of the mind of the imagination of thought should be greater than the physical world then matter -one by Man Ray focusing on the human body both of which arguably take advantage of this notion of the out form of formless the Act form can take place through simple lighting and cropping it is it defamation a process of undoing the fundamental notion of form itself so in the brass eye at the top is woman's body is cropped off lit in a certain way so that it starts to resemble perhaps a phallus and similarly in the Man Ray below dramatically Lich and cropped view of torso convert it into a Bull's Head -the Dadaist and Surrealists artist's life and his works. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants in 1890, Man Ray moved with his family from Philadelphia to Brooklyn a few years later. Despite his family's desires to see Man Ray attend college, from an early age Man Ray took an interest in art and decided to pursue this as his career. In his later years Man Ray did not place much importance in discussing the details of his childhood and told reporters not to ask questions whose answers could be found in books. While details of his adult life are much more readily available, those of Man Ray's childhood remain murky until his life as a professional artist began. As a result of the virulent anti-Semitism he faced, Radnitzky began signing his artwork as "Man Ray" in 1912, the name by which the painter, photographer, and filmmaker would be known for the rest of his life. After scandalizing his family by bringing home a nude model, Man Ray moved to Manhattan and began his career as a professional artist. While in Manhattan, Man Ray's art decorated the cover of the anarchist journal of Emma Goldman, a renowned anarchist whose views influenced Man Ray's thinking on the surrounding world and on his art. The 1913 Armory Show in New York represented a turning point in Man Ray's life and artistic career. With artworks such as Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, Henri Matisse's Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), Paul Cézanne's Baigneuses, and Pablo Picasso's Le guitariste, the Armory Show was largely responsible for introducing avant-garde art to American viewers through the display of artworks in the styles of cubism, fauvism, futurism, and impressionism. The Armory Show met with derision from the general public, many of whom felt that what it showcased was not "real" art. The New York Times called the show "pathological" while the New York Herald argued that the show represented a body of aliens that was "imperiling the republic of art." Critics also argued that the art demonstrated anarchy and insanity on the part of the artists. The exhibition continued to Chicago and Boston where it faced similar responses and protests. While most Americans, including President Theodore Roosevelt, lamented the new direction of art that the Armory Show represented, it had a profound impact on Man Ray and influenced the future directions of his work. Shortly after visiting the Armory Show, Man Ray created works in the expressionist and cubist styles. Inspired by Cezanne, Man Ray rented a home in the country where he married the Belgium poet Adon Lacroix and concentrated on his art. He met Marcel Duchamp, whose work he had greatly admired since the Armory Show, and who had inspired Man Ray's new directions in art. While the two did not speak the same language, according to Man Ray, they understood one another through their mutual artistic interests. Shortly thereafter, Man Ray separated from his wife Adon Lacroix and returned to New York. It was in New York that he became acquainted with a new art movement emerging from Switzerland: Dada. Dadaists denounced the ideologies of nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism that they believed caused the First World War that was tearing apart the European continent. A group of artists led by Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara among others, represented an artistic anarchy. Dadaists rejected previous forms of art, which they viewed as constraining and complacent in its contribution to society and war. Instead, according to Man Ray, Dadaists sought to create new art for the modern age and make useful objects into something useless. 1 Man Ray started a group of Dadaists in New York to collaborate with the European artists, however, their artwork was never well-received in the United States. Man Ray wrote to Tzara that: "dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival, - will not notice dada." After the rejection of his own work, and of the Dadaist movement in New York, Man Ray decided to move to Paris. In Paris, Man Ray quickly became a part of a community of like-minded artists, many of whom participated in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. It was in Paris that Man Ray began photographing many of the famous artists of the era, including James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Gertrude Stein. Man Ray also took a celebrated photograph of the French author Marcel Proust on his deathbed, an honor assigned to him by the Parisian artistic community. Not content with traditional photographic portraiture, Man Ray placed his subjects in unexpected circumstances and poses. He also developed a new Dadaist photographic technique that he later extended to film, known as "rayographs," in which he produced images without either a camera or negative by exposing photo paper covered with objects. Man Ray made further breakthroughs in photography during his time as a fashion photographer by being the first to turn fashion photography into an art. Man Ray's romances inspired his artwork, and his partners acted as his models and muses for his paintings, sculptures, photographs, and experimental films. His lover Kiki of Montparnasse posed for one of Man Ray's most well-known pieces, Violon d'Ingres, a play on words in French that means "hobby." In a photograph inspired by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the nude model's back resembles a cello. Man Ray painted the f-holes of the instrument onto the photographic print and then rephotographed this print to create a new version of Ingres' classical nudes. This image represents Man Ray's respect and admiration for the old masters while constantly pushing the boundaries of established art. Man Ray also mentored and collaborated with his lover, the American photographer Lee Miller. During his return to the US for the duration of the Second World War, Man Ray met and married Juliet Browner, a dancer from Brooklyn who remained his wife until his death in 1976. Like many avant-garde artists of his time, Man Ray's achievements were not recognized until after his death. Man Ray said that he "always wanted to be accepted, not understood," and while fellow artists recognized his achievements and contributions to Dadaist and Surrealist painting, photography, film, and sculpture, many people did not understand the significance of his works until after his death. Man Ray truly was a "free man" as he claimed, and throughout his life he insisted upon making the art that he felt needed to be made rather than the art that the public expected or accepted. Man Ray's legacy lives on through his art and his persistence in the face of an often unsympathetic audience. -Born Emanuel Radnitzky in 1890, Man Ray spent most of his young life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The eldest child of an immigrant Jewish tailor, he was a mediocre student who shunned college for the bohemian artistic life in nearby Manhattan. In New York he began to work as an artist, meeting many of the most important figures of the time. He learned the rudiments of photography from the art dealer and photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, and began to experiment on his own. In 1914, Man Ray married the Belgian poet, Adon Lacroix, and soon after met the experimental artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was to be one of Man Ray's greatest influences as well as a close friend and collaborator. Together the two attempted to bring some of the verve of the European experimental art movements to America. The most energetic of these movements was "dada." Dada was an attempt to create work so absurd it confused the viewer's sense of reality. The dadaists would take everyday objects and present them as if they were finished works of art. For Man Ray, dada's experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York, and he wrote "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival." Having broken with his wife, Man Ray left New York for Paris in 1921—marking a continuous stream of tempestuous and often doomed romances. Through Duchamp, Man Ray met some of the most exciting artists and thinkers in Paris. Though he didn't speak a word of French at first, he was welcomed into this group and became its unofficial photographer. Among the many models from this period were Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Gertude Stein, James Joyce, and the famous performer, Kiki of Montparnasse. For six years Kiki was Ray's constant model, muse, and lover. Among the most famous of his photographs of the time are the many of Kiki. Man Ray's photographs of Kiki often use the outline of her body to represent other objects. This interest in minimalism and abstraction carried over to Man Ray's experiments with what he termed "rayographs." A "rayograph" was made by placing a three-dimensional object or series of objects on top of a piece of photographic paper and exposing it to light. These images lyrically and impressionistically represented objects such as ropes, light bulbs, and thumb tacks. Many artists responded positively to Man Ray's daring combination of minimalism, chance, and absurdity, and in 1922 he published his first book of them entitled The Delightful Fields. Throughout the 1930s Man Ray continued to paint, sculpt, and make portraits along with the surrealists, whose freewheeling dispositions were similar to his own. Though deeply immersed in the artistic life of France, World War II forced Man Ray to leave Paris, and he moved to Hollywood. In Hollywood, many expatriate artists, musicians, and writers took up residence. He spent ten years there working as a fashion photographer. With his brave use of lighting and minimalist representation, Man Ray produced fashion photographs unlike any that had come before—and forever changed that discipline. Man Ray longed, however, to be back in Paris, the city that had nurtured his creative life. So, after the war, married to a young dancer named Juliet Brown, he moved back. He spent the next twenty-five years there, creating paintings, sculptures, films, and photographs. He died on November 18, 1976 at the age of eighty-six. One the great artists and agitators of his time, Man Ray will be remembered not simply for the fascinating and experimental works he left behind, but for the crucial role he played in encouraging the revolutionary in art. --In the United States, meanwhile, Dada had a further manifestation, spurred by contact between exiled European artists and their Americcan counterparts -Man Ray (1890-1976), the American artist born Emmanuel Radnitzky, maintained that there was no such thing as New York Dada, and indeed conditions there were markedly different from those in Europe solarized prints, a technique Man Ray originally investigated with Berenice Abbot and Lee Miller, who were his studio assistants at different times -solarization involves briefly exposing a print or negative to light during the development process -the result is a reversal of tones, especially along the edges of objects -sometimes called edge reversal, solarization is unpredictable, which made it a favorite technique of the Surrealists -Ubac also developed a technique called brulage, or burning, in which film emulsion was melted to produce swirling shapes (La Conciliabule; brulage depicts slippery-looking dissolving forms that signal the transitory quality of human identity that gives print shimmering, dreamlike quality) -attracted to the bohemian life of Paris in the 1920s, Berenice Abbot worked for Man Ray from 1924 to 1926 -while in paris, she also studied with Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a photographer who roamed Paris and its environs, producing about ten thousand prints in the early 20th century (Cafe, Avenue de la Grand-Armee) -using a box camera and glass negatives, Atget resisted the then fashionable Pictorialist photographic style, and compiled clear objective images, which he called "documents" -the Paris Surrealists found Atget's "documents" unsettling and evocative, and briefly put the reluctant Atget forward as an instinctive voice for their philosophy

Franz Roh Essay: Mechanism and Expression

-photography and being familiar with it will be absolutely essential (p. 156); will amount to illiteracy if don't know the camera -people used to not be able to read, and now even children learn it; the same will happen with photography -creating a global visual language (a utopian hope) -social and cultural impact of technology is important; looking at world with that technology extends what it means to be human and engage with the world -different applied ways of using it

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Essay: Photography

-photography and film allow us to see world with new eyes; with objective vision -doesn't enjoy the pictorial and imaginative images since not using camera to full ability (capturing pure optical image unlike our eyes creating a conceptual one)

Aleksander Rodchenko

-radical new ways of looking at world -Bauhaus had a utopian view whereas Rodchenko was making work in a place where that socialist revolution already happened -difference with art photography in the US (defining medium based on formalist qualities) versus in Europe (f/64 members like Weston would be horrified by his violating the pristine surface of the photograph) leading photographers in the Soviet Union was Alexander rodchenko who in addition of course is also a graphic designer and sculpture but also we become in his work he railed against what he called the belly button photograph we see her on the right a journalist who's not doing a graph on the grounds of Photography is very much characterized by extreme points of view and perspective by belly button photograph was one of the popular cameras at the time was a twin lens reflex camera that had a ground glass that was on the top of the camera and focus adjust the focus to check if they're photograph using the camera in that position what you were doing was simply replicating the standard concept of the Revolutionary you like moholy-nagy and images that would fundamentally change the viewer is very much about having a revolutionary point of view as opposed to us was an attempt at a more utopian it was a matter of impressing upon his viewers that the world was different --the prospect of a revolutionary art was eagerly taken up by Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956), a Russian painter and sculptor who had absorbed the geometric abstractions of cubism and who valued the process of collage, pioneered by the Cubists in the decade before World War I -as his political activity increased in the new arts organizations initiated by the Soviet government in its early years, Rodchenko investigated the role art might play in society -he resolved to make art less theoretical and more practical -with other artists, he went to factories to learn design needs first hand, ahe he conceived posters, fabrics, and furniture -Rodchenko wholeheartedly accepted photography because he felt it freed artists from inherited aesthetic ideas, especially perspective and the other techniques used to render the world as it is, rather than as it might be -he promoted the notion that new concepts could not be expressed in old media, and was a leading proponent of faktura, the idea prominent in Soviet art theory that an artist should discover a medium's distinctive capabilities by experimenting with its inherent qualities -looking at the work of photographers who traveled to foreign countries, Rodchenko scoffed, "They photograph with museum eyes, the eyes of art history" -Rodchenko's hope for new media such as film and photography was enhanced by looking at German art and fashion magazines, such as Woman, Young World, and Modern Illustrated Journal, which featured experimental German photography -in turn, Rodchenko's work appeared in the Russian magazine LEF (Left Front of the Arts), a left-wing arts magazine founded by poet Vladimir Maiakovskii -in 1923, Rodchenko gathered images from the picture press, and also commissioned a series of photographs from another photographer -he joined these images to make photo montage illustrations for Maiakovskii's poem "About This" (use class of incongruous objects to evoke the poet's seething anxiety about the absence of his lover) -these images are visually arresting but it is hard to see how uninitiated viewers could have interpreted their symbolic meanings -the post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde advocated making images in such a way as to obstruct habits of seeing -odd camera angles, unrecognizable close-ups, multiple exposures, and confused perspective all served to "make strange" the expected appearance of the world -in the mid-1920s, Rodchenko learned to make his own photographs and moved from photomontage to straight photography (Untitled, (Walking Figure), 1928) -nevertheless, he continued to disparage "belly button" camerawork-- that is, the conventional, balanced picture taken with a camera held near the waistline while the photographer peered into the viewing screen -in the years immediately after the Revolution, the Soviety government courted experimental artists in its search for innovative methods of mass communication -but by the early 1930s, the romance turned sour -official policy shifted from avant-garde art-- seen as intelectual, bourgeois, and thus part of the capitalist system-- and instead promoted Socialist Realism, that is, a conventionally realistic style used as a vehicle for rousing propaganda messages that could be universally understood by the workers -as the avant-garde was losing official sanction, Rodchenko began the huge official task of photographing the construction of the White Sea Canal, or Stalin Canal (1931-33) -using a less startlingly inventive approach than in his earlier work, he produced about three thousand photographs, some of which were published in a special 1933 edition of USSR in Construction, a magazine intended to show Soviet progress, especially to audiences abroad -tellingly, Rodchenko did not focus on the use of forced labor, or the deaths of thousand of workers at the site-- subjects forbidden by the propaganda controls enforced in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership in the 1930s -in Europe, advertising carried less of a stigma, and was even considered a meritorious photographic pursuit -some Soviet artists saw it as a crucial aspect of modern mass media that could be used to change the public's outlook -especially in the Soviet Union, theorists were careful to distinguish between capitalist advertising, which they saw as misleading the public, and socialist advertising, which they argued was an educational tool -in 1923, Maiakovskii and Rodchenko formed an association that they called Maiakovskii-Rodchenko Advertising-Constructor -Maiakovskii's manifesto "Agitation and Advertising" argued that he and Rodchenko "had to put into action all the weapons that the enemy also uses, including advertising" -similar aims guided the formation of the Adbusters Media Foundation in the late 20th century -Maiakovskii-Rodchenko produced bold graphic designs that occasionally integrated photographs -the firm aimed their advertising at a proletarian audience, and promoted a variety of products, including state-manufactured candy, pacifcers, and beer

Man Ray Essay: The Ray of Light

-subconscious when taking photo shows person's selectivity/human desire -give freedom to unconscious

'the bellybutton photograph'

-the conventionalized/bourgeois world view -the leading photographers in the Soviet Union was Alexander rodchenko who in addition of course is also a graphic designer and sculpture but also we become in his work he railed against what he called the belly button photograph we see her on the right a journalist who's not doing a graph on the grounds of Photography is very much characterized by extreme points of view and perspective by belly button photograph was one of the popular cameras at the time was a twin lens reflex camera that had a ground glass that was on the top of the camera and focus adjust the focus to check if they're photograph using the camera in that position what you were doing was simply replicating the standard concept of the Revolutionary you like moholy-nagy and images that would fundamentally change the viewer is very much about having a revolutionary point of view as opposed to us was an attempt at a more utopian it was a matter of impressing upon his viewers that the world was different -he continued to disparage "belly button" camerawork-- that is, the conventional, balanced picture taken with a camera held near the waistline while the photographer peered into the viewing screen

Bauhaus - Walter Gropius

-utopian, socialist sort of vision; well-designed, functional, and beautiful -improving lot of working class -photography as extension of human senses in the late 1920s reading assigned specific negative brings us to the Bauhaus founded by Architects about to pull a fuse in 1919 without house was a utopian Haven for avant-garde artists during the. Of Rise of change and tenuous peace in Germany after World War 1 a war veteran brophy's found his battered country badly in need of a nation and believe that the collective of Bauhaus artist who played an important role based on the concept of the medieval Cooperative of artists and Craftsman kind of Fine Arts human Ingenuity and modern technology in order to help construct a rational egalitarian and ordered Society in 1925 after losing the financial support with the city of volume are the schools original phone gropius relocated the Bauhaus Dessau and industrial city of 50,000 about a hundred miles level Plains of South by the city gropius constructed his Bauhaus building a cleaning glass and concrete complex structures that became the center of the universe in which the artist create Newark pit for the modern era the Embrace novel techniques and free experimentation architecture typography carpentry metal work using sculpture wall painting in theater all had established workshops at the school before 9 it's not odd reason organized Laszlo moholy-nagy gropius appointed to leave The Culinary course and metal Workshop in 1923 by his wife to self as one of the Prime movers and enthusiastic Advocates of experimental photographic techniques while at the school he continued to write articles and books on the subject including his seminal Malachi for film photography and film in 1925 Illustrated with many of his own photographs demonstrated unusual camera in addition to photography moholy-nagy was known for his Innovations and contributions to the modernist graphic design as well which we see exemplified by the cover of this magazine design five put a graph on the left distinct abilities radio tower of 1928 is very characteristic of method of reading is New Vision --in 1923, Moholy-Nagy was invited to join the faculty of Bauhaus, the German art school established by architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), whose goal was to integrate the arts with industry -Moholy-Nagy already had an international reputation for his abstract paintings and sculptures, some of which used industrial materials and processes, such as porcelain enamel on steel; he was an energetic member of a faculty that would later include artists Wassily Kadinsky and Paul Klee -the Bauhaus curriculum did not include classes in photography until soon before it was closed by the Nazis in 1933, but Moholy-Nagy's ideas were influential -in addition, his 1925 book Painting, Photography, Film, published by the Bauhaus, became an international reference for the new photography -the upbeat mood of experimental photography was captured in the title of an article by Bauhaus artist Johannes Molzahn, "Stop Reading! Look!" -Molzahn was convinced that formal education should adapt to the increasingly visually portrayed world rendered in mass-media newspapers and magazines -he offered "Stop Reading! Look!" as the guiding motto for teaching and learning -also at the Bauhaus was Austrian-born designer and photographer Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), whose design for the first cover of the institution's publication, Bauhaus, was a photomontage -Bayer's post-Bauhaus career included the design of an infamous Nazi brochure, which demonstrated the extent to which photomontage was not a technique intrinsically wedded to progressive politics, but a style whose aesthetic features could serve any political persuasion

Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Age), 1929

-while running his own commercial studio, Sander began making portraits of farmers in the rural Westerwald area of Germany, which spurred him to plan a systematic portrait gallery of occupational types, beginning with farmers, continuing through the industrial jobs, the professions, and the artists, and ending with unemployed and disabled people -he planned to have 45 portfolios, each sonsisting of 12 related images, which would be collectively called people of the 20th Century -Sander was not unique in preparing a survey of the German people -as a post-WWI morale booster, perhaps, books containing a panoply of German portraits came into fashion during the 1920s -Sander's plan extended the encyclopedic urge of 19th century photography into the 20th century -during decades of shooting, Sander used a set formula reminsicent of early photgraphy -his usual method was to take sharp full-length or half-length portraits of sobjects, posed with props and garments suggesting their work (Boxers Paul Roderstein and Hein Heesem Cologne) -most of his images show that he arranged his sitters, carefully focusing so that facial characteristics were distinctive, even unique -the relationship of the figure to the surroundings in his work is novel-- a process of distance and isolation that unmasks qualities in the subjects such as their relationship to others -this was a Modernist project, at least as it was understood by whole generations of photographers who came afterward -Sander's technique-- and moments of humor-- sometimes undermined the emotionally detached scheme he had in mind -he was not interested in the odd angles and cameraless photographs of the German experimentalist photographers, and he renounced both his youthful infatuation with Pictorialism and the casual spontaneity of the snapshot -instead, he insisted on three guiding concepts: "See, observe, and think correctly!" -although the immense project was never completed, Sander did publish sixty photographs in Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Time) (1929) --in 1936, after the Nazi party came to power, remaining copies of Face of the Time, along with their printing plates used to produce them, were destroyed by order of the Government Bureau of Fine Arts -Sander's images showed how, in reality, many German people did not have the "Aryan" facial features and physiques promoted by the Nazis as the infallible marks of the German race -moreover, his series ended with unemployed and disabled people-- the very types the Nazis first targeted for removal to "purify" the Aryan race -Sander's Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series People of the 20th Century, and is introduced by an essay by Alfred Döblin titled "On Faces, Pictures, and their Truth." Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander's book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the photographic plates destroyed.

Germany: The New Objectivity

A (German) reaction in art against Romantic idealism and extreme emotional expression -surrealist art in Germany there was a different sort of emphasis on the real that emerged in the 20s and movement that was known as the new objectivity you have Xfinity or Noah's Ark leech text emerged as a style in Germany in the twenties as a challenge to scratch an ism and its name suggests it offered a return to unsentimental reality of focus on the objective world as opposed to the more abstract romantic or idealistic Tendencies of expressionism style is most often associated with portraiture and its leading practitioner is included Beckman Auto Deeks and George gross there sometimes reminiscent of the meticulous processes of the Old Masters frequently portrayed German bymar Society in encaustic Lisa terrible manner the work of photographer August sander can be seen as manifestation of this movement even though he began in the teens what eventually turned into his project to document the people was the 20th century is Secretary of West German radio in Cologne on the right photograph during his work for the general public broadcasting institution the portrait trust a comparison here to order Jesus portrait of the journals of Sylvia Von Harden the portrait who is paint that was painted five years earlier they both to pick a new movement of women at work during the time simultaneously androgynous and feminine liberated from the domestic beer the portraits are important within the rise of the new objectivity movement in Sherman art his reaction against the domicile of expressionism seeking a more objective and unsentimental portrayal of the human figure --the detached approach to subject matter favored by European New Objectivity artists and what might be called "the archival tendency" came together in the haunting images produced by German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) new objectivity alternative in 20s to expressionism; objective rather than subjective -august sander documents people of the 20th century; archiving different type of people (his book name is in powerpoint -albert renger-patzsch (the world is beautiful) with orderly images

Rayograph

Also called photogram, image created by placing objects on light sensitive paper and exposing it to light -Man Ray developed a new Dadaist photographic technique that he later extended to film, known as "rayographs," in which he produced images without either a camera or negative by exposing photo paper covered with objects. -interest in minimalism and abstraction carried over to Man Ray's experiments with what he termed "rayographs." A "rayograph" was made by placing a three-dimensional object or series of objects on top of a piece of photographic paper and exposing it to light. These images lyrically and impressionistically represented objects such as ropes, light bulbs, and thumb tacks.

August Sander

August sander can be seen as manifestation of this movement (New Objectivity) even though he began in the teens what eventually turned into his project to document the people was the 20th century is Secretary of West German radio in Cologne on the right photograph during his work for the general public broadcasting institution the portrait trust a comparison here to order Jesus portrait of the journals of Sylvia Von Harden the portrait who is paint that was painted five years earlier they both to pick a new movement of women at work during the time simultaneously androgynous and feminine liberated from the domestic beer the portraits are important within the rise of the new objectivity movement in Sherman art his reaction against the domicile of expressionism seeking a more objective and unsentimental portrayal of the human figure Founders portraits to pick the faces of people from diverse nationalities genders classes in professional is output spins landscape portrait architecture and commercial photography subsequently a huge body of work crossword Sumter was born in a small rural Enclave outside clone best of us in 1910 he founded his first photographic studio in hello begin taking photographs both are and in his hometown receive the young Farmers from vegetables wearing their Sunday Best on the road here from 1913 heister document to people at this time it wasn't until the 1920s however that he conceived of these images as part of enormous project documenting the people of the 20th century in 1929 he published a selection of 60 images from this emerging project which the book was called the time and included both of these photographs inside was one of a number of incredibly important photo books published in the late twenties in Germany you see an example here try some of the page spreads wish gave plenty of white space so that you could focus on the images the captions are very minimal in Saunders work he typically does not identify the individuals by name but rather by occupation or social status it's some of the people of his time so he looked at people from different occupations so we have a bricklayer the pastry cook for the secretary when the student were the unemployed person and his engagement with with his sitters is really interesting appreciate when you look at his prints of his actual photographs he persisted in using a camera with a relatively slow lattice so that the exposure time was second and a half two seconds or more depending on the conditions and in that span of time one has a sense from his portraits they're always in space and there's always get a real sense of counter between the photographer and the subject there's not enough PowerPlay at work of the photographer overwhelming the sitter but rather he's heard of even some playing field and give him a somewhat longest exposure time there's usually some elements of the picture that's a little bit out of focus you know someone's moved their handr breezed a little bit get a sense of the subjects breathing in these photographs are incredibly powerful and case you couldn't tell solder is one of my favorite photographers in the 20th century perhaps because of the intensity of his realism and his presence with each of these three real human beings on the other side of the lens whenSaunders project was Was looked upon further negatively when the Nazis took power in the early thirties his son was actually a communist and that didn't happen either in fact it's to cite when the Nazi book burnings took place started in 1935 that was one of the books that went on the pile and it won't Point they've also sees number of his plates and the equipment from his Studio whether he managed to escape with a bunch of its most likely because is images reveal real people and real social positions as opposed to the Penn masala gized Notions German nests and who people were in the eyes of the Nazis and realism would not work for that August Sander -the detached approach to subject matter favored by European New Objectivity artists and what might be called "the archival tendency" came together in the haunting images produced by German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) -while running his own commercial studio, Sander began making portraits of farmers in the rural Westerwald area of Germany, which spurred him to plan a systematic portrait gallery of occupational types, beginning with farmers, continuing through the industrial jobs, the professions, and the artists, and ending with unemployed and disabled people -he planned to have 45 portfolios, each sonsisting of 12 related images, which would be collectively called people of the 20th Century -Sander was not unique in preparing a survey of the German people -as a post-WWI morale booster, perhaps, books containing a panoply of German portraits came into fashion during the 1920s -Sander's plan extended the encyclopedic urge of 19th century photography into the 20th century -during decades of shooting, Sander used a set formula reminsicent of early photgraphy -his usual method was to take sharp full-length or half-length portraits of sobjects, posed with props and garments suggesting their work (Boxers Paul Roderstein and Hein Heesem Cologne) -most of his images show that he arranged his sitters, carefully focusing so that facial characteristics were distinctive, even unique -the relationship of the figure to the surroundings in his work is novel-- a process of distance and isolation that unmasks qualities in the subjects such as their relationship to others -this was a Modernist project, at least as it was understood by whole generations of photographers who came afterward -Sander's technique-- and moments of humor-- sometimes undermined the emotionally detached scheme he had in mind -he was not interested in the odd angles and cameraless photographs of the German experimentalist photographers, and he renounced both his youthful infatuation with Pictorialism and the casual spontaneity of the snapshot -instead, he insisted on three guiding concepts: "See, observe, and think correctly!" -although the immense project was never completed, Sander did publish sixty photographs in Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Time) (1929) -he also gave a pioneering series of radio lectures in 1931 on the history of photography -in 1936, after the Nazi party came to power, remaining copies of Face of the Time, along with their printing plates used to produce them, were destroyed by order of the Government Bureau of Fine Arts -Sander's images showed how, in reality, many German people did not have the "Aryan" facial features and physiques promoted by the Nazis as the infallible marks of the German race -moreover, his series ended with unemployed and disabled people-- the very types the Nazis first targeted for removal to "purify" the Aryan race -after WWII, Sander added photographs of political prisoners and persecuted Jews to his work People of the 20th Century -he continued to work after the war, although wartime bombing was reponsible for the destruction of his studio and a postwar fire that destoryed about 30,000 negatives -Sander did not live to see the enormous influence his work and ideas would have on late 20th century photography -his detachment from the subject, coupled with his urge to create comprehensive series, fed the imaginations of Bern and Hilla Becher in their ongoing sequences of antiquated technological structures -through the Bechers, many prominent German contemporary photographers, such as Andreas gursky, adopted photographic objectivity as a visual stance in relation to the built environment -Sander's work has been a touchstone of past and present international Conceptual artists, who have investigated the qualities peculiar to photography, such as how far a subject is placed from the camera -indeed, his images have nourished the notion that physical distance is an effective visual metaphor for psychic remove

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus -Laszlo Moholy-Nagy arrived in Berlin just before the 1920 Dada Fair -He soon met Hoch, Hausmann, and other members of the Berlin Dada group -like them, Moholy-Nagy favored the use of industrial materials an concepts, and he adopted the Soviet artists' notion of faktura, which he understood to mean that a new vision could be created only when photography was practiced for its own inherent qualities, not as an imitation of painting -while the Dadaists were politically active, many joining the Communist party, Moholy-Nagy concentrated instead on technology and its relation to art -he insisted that "the first and foremost issue" for photography was to determine "a more or less exact photographic language," independent of the past -his social concern was expressed in his theory that mass production, especially the wide circulation of images, made it possible for an artist to change perceptions of the world, thereby creating a desire for social revolution -Moholy-Nagy claimed that photography's chief characteristic was light, and that artists should experiment with patterns of light and shade -"this century belongs to light... photography is the first means of giving tangible shape to light, though in a transposed and... almost abstract form" -"today, everything is concentrated, more powerfully than ever before, on the visual" -Moholy-Nagy looked to science to research the physiological and psychological basis for visual presentations, which would be as effective as written language -he announced that "the illiteracy of the future will be ignorance of photography" -like Rodchenko, Moholy-Nagy proposed that photographers should radically change the angle of camera vision -he advocated such devices a distorting mirrors that would alter normal views, and he anticipated the invention of new sorts of cameras that would allow the operator to play with perspective -he also envisaged photographers adapting microscopes, telescopes, and x-ray equipment to their repertoire of image-making -among his proposals was the making of cameraless photographs, which he called photograms -in 1923, Moholy-Nagy was invited to join the faculty of Bauhaus, the German art school established by architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), whose goal was to integrate the arts with industry -Moholy-Nagy already had an international reputation for his abstract paintings and sculptures, some of which used industrial materials and processes, such as porcelain enamel on steel; he was an energetic member of a faculty that would later include artists Wassily Kadinsky and Paul Klee -the Bauhaus curriculum did not include classes in photography until soon before it was closed by the Nazis in 1933, but Moholy-Nagy's ideas were influential -in addition, his 1925 book Painting, Photography, Film, published by the Bauhaus, became an international reference for the new photography -in capitalist countries such as Germany, Modernist chic sold upscale products -Moholy-Nagy routinely produced commercial photographs for clients including fashion magazines, commercial photographs for clients including fashion magazines, publishers, an airline, and an optical company (Goerz) -Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray all made non-commercial films -Moholy-Nagy was influential in organizing the international 1929 "Film und Foto" exhibition held in Stuttgart, Germany, to which he contributed 97 photographs. Photomontages, and photograms -at Fifo, as the exhibition was called, viewers could see how far photography had changed from the fuzzy look and rural subjects of the turn-of-the-century Pictorialism -moholy-nagy was known for his Innovations and contributions to the modernist graphic design as well which we see exemplified by the cover of this magazine design five put a graph on the left distinct abilities radio tower of 1928 is very characteristic of method of reading is New Vision using photography the radio tower was a new construction it was essentially the Eiffel Tower of Berlin when it was built the tallest architecture and it was treated actually as a tourist location we are on what was an observation deck that was built into the tower so they were elevators that took one up and the City from the tower which is what most of the tourists want to go see instead turn the camera looking precipitously active plunging perspectives of the power tables and chairs perspective is the air gives us the excitement of modernism and the deer hoodie provides us with a spectacular view of new possibilities -it was a celebration of all of that with moholy-nagy there's less of as so much as it is to understand that these new tools the camera movie camera could enable us to see the world in a radically new modern sort of way it was utterly in keeping with the names of the Bauhaus -the social significance of mass media was quickly perceived by artists -Hungarian-born painter and sculptor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) asserted the unique qualities of sound recording, film, and photography, which he thought were the best media for representing the modern experience -by contrast, the photograms and other photographs by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy conveyed a sense of newness and Modernist values without specifically alluding to a particular political philosophy

Need for revolutionary consciousness

expressive way of using photography from the Soviet Union contacts in Russia was a bit different than what we saw with the dollhouse princess in Germany Germany was still a western capitalist state of course in Russia in 1917 they had in the Civil War that took place for a few years after the Revolution by the time we get into the twenties there is a dedication by number of the avant-garde artists and designers in Russia put a montage was an important part of this artist here whose work was Molino often vary depending on for the Montage. Koutsos on the right as using put a montage here whining put a graph of its mother graphic design elements to create an image illustrating the electrification of the entire country the elder sister image portrait called interesting when he doesn't call himself the artist it's the Constructor these Soviet artist workers contributing to Artist it's actually looked at themselves as workers contributing to the Revolution and sought to undermine traditional Notions of Art and artists because structure is really fascinating image but also it's your kind of combined with this photograph of his hand holding a compass against drawing board and so his hand emerges true the palm of hand structure of meaning of the letters of the important person because he managed to actually to spend some time at the Bauhaus went over to Germany it's been some time with the evening so he wasn't post Revolutionary Society in the Soviet Union make for some very cute differences between Sun photography -Photography is very much characterized by extreme points of view and perspective by belly button photograph was one of the popular cameras at the time was a twin lens reflex camera that had a ground glass that was on the top of the camera and focus adjust the focus to check if they're photograph using the camera in that position what you were doing was simply replicating the standard concept of the Revolutionary you like moholy-nagy and images that would fundamentally change the viewer is very much about having a revolutionary point of view as opposed to us was an attempt at a more utopian it was a matter of impressing upon his viewers that the world was different to demonstrate this -we see this comrade using technology that was helping revolutionized their world as it were the photograph of a chauffeur which is rather brilliant because we see the chauffeur peace pipe in his now and we see the pipe sticking in from the right-hand edge of the photograph here you see that he actually smoking it there but he's the photographer is viewed in the reflection of the chrome headlight on the car that he drives and so we're seeing the worker Illustrated in combination with the tool of his work with his the automobile but there's more than that seen in the reflection of the headlights if you look a little bit further and so he's a war to take the photograph of the worker reflected in the headlights of the car that he drives in any event photography possibilities of post-revolutionary society Uncle also did things like is propping to get the effects that he wants to know if she can read an article in magazine who played in front of her butt is a princess radically crop the image in concentration is abstract. Pattern set up by her head scarf and then we have the volumes of her face as she has a beautiful portrait of his mother. Not sentimental but Equal who's engaged in an intellectual activity beautiful as well so this is so then we haven't seen a number of different ways that is in Europe is brace modernism and modernity the wrong way in which they see the camera playing a significant role in the United States -Revolutionary Art: The Soviet Photograph -in Russia, the Revolution of 1917, which placed revolutionary socialists in power, had a deep impact on artists, particularly the avant-garde -even before the overthrow of the czar, abstraction had already become a symbol for a future untained by the past -after the Revolution, artists experimenting with Cubism and Futurism responded to the Communist Party's buoyant utopianism, expressed in The ABC of Communism (1919), which proclaimed that "within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs." -El Lissitzky, an architect who worked in many media, including photography, was one of the most politically committed artists -he renounced self-expression in art, along with easel painting, which he associated with a corrupt past and stagnant aesthetics -with others, Lissitzky insisted that the artist's role was now linked to industry and to reshaping everyday life -in avant-grade circles, the terms "production art" and "production artist" began being used, to indicate that the artist would employ technology in order to mold a new society -photography was favored precisely because it was the product of a machine that could be mass produced by other machines -Lissitzky's The Constructor (1924) shows the artist in his new role as builder of engineer (borrowing from two Russian art movements,Suprematism and Constructivism, both of which favored abstract geometric shapes in unshaded colors, Lissitzky superimposed an image of himself on a piece of graph paper, and layered on top a picture of his hand, uniting hand and eye in a symbol of ideal labor. Superimposing one element on another recalled the experiments of Cubism) -it features the austere geometric overlays frequently used by Russian avant-garde image-makers, who favored non-realistic, intersecting planes that flattened Renaissance perspective and thereby condemned the older art of morally bankrupt elites -in Lissitzky's image, the artist's hand fingers a compass, which seems to have drawn a perfect circle around his head; the circle forms a halo, as in a Russian religious printing -the "sainted" new Soviet artist worked with geometric shapes and signs, as well as printers' type, which emerged as primary elements in Soviet poster design and magazine illustrations -Lissitzky also designed trade exhibitions, demonstrating Soviet industrial progress -in these installations, he transformed the shape of the room by having images and text bulge out from from the wall or droop from the ceiling -many Soviety artists were also writers and theorists addressing national and international audiences -Latvian-born Gustav Klutsis realized that it was imperative "to construct iconic representations for a new mass audience" -he used photomontage, assembling images and text from a variety of mass-media sources, such as newspapers and magazines -the result overturned the expectations of everyday experience and of realistic painting with arresting image collisions -Klutsis, however, insisted that his images should be understood by the illiterate as well as the educated -in Electrification of the Entire Country (1920), a giant-size Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), strides forward confidently into the future as workers on the Modernist building's roof-top cheer him on -the prospect of a revolutionary art was eagerly taken up by Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956), a Russian painter and sculptor who had absorbed the geometric abstractions of cubism and who valued the process of collage, pioneered by the Cubists in the decade before World War I -as his political activity increased in the new arts organizations initiated by the Soviet government in its early years, Rodchenko investigated the role art might play in society -he resolved to make art less theoretical and more practical -with other artists, he went to factories to learn design needs first hand, ahe he conceived posters, fabrics, and furniture -Rodchenko wholeheartedly accepted photography because he felt it freed artists from inherited aesthetic ideas, especially perspective and the other techniques used to render the world as it is, rather than as it might be -he promoted the notion that new concepts could not be expressed in old media, and was a leading proponent of faktura, the idea prominent in Soviet art theory that an artist should discover a medium's distinctive capabilities by experimenting with its inherent qualities -looking at the work of photographers who traveled to foreign countries, Rodchenko scoffed, "They photograph with museum eyes, the eyes of art history" -Rodchenko's hope for new media such as film and photography was enhanced by looking at German art and fashion magazines, such as Woman, Young World, and Modern Illustrated Journal, which featured experimental German photography -in turn, Rodchenko's work appeared in the Russian magazine LEF (Left Front of the Arts), a left-wing arts magazine founded by poet Vladimir Maiakovskii -in 1923, Rodchenko gathered images from the picture press, and also commissioned a series of photographs from another photographer -he joined these images to make photo montage illustrations for Maiakovskii's poem "About This" (use class of incongruous objects to evoke the poet's seething anxiety about the absence of his lover) -these images are visually arresting but it is hard to see how uninitiated viewers could have interpreted their symbolic meanings -the post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde advocated making images in such a way as to obstruct habits of seeing -odd camera angles, unrecognizable close-ups, multiple exposures, and confused perspective all served to "make strange" the expected appearance of the world -in the mid-1920s, Rodchenko learned to make his own photographs and moved from photomontage to straight photography (Untitled, (Walking Figure), 1928) -nevertheless, he continued to disparage "belly button" camerawork-- that is, the conventional, balanced picture taken with a camera held near the waistline while the photographer peered into the viewing screen -in the years immediately after the Revolution, the Soviety government courted experimental artists in its search for innovative methods of mass communication -but by the early 1930s, the romance turned sour -official policy shifted from avant-garde art-- seen as intelectual, bourgeois, and thus part of the capitalist system-- and instead promoted Socialist Realism, that is, a conventionally realistic style used as a vehicle for rousing propaganda messages that could be universally understood by the workers -as the avant-garde was losing official sanction, Rodchenko began the huge official task of photographing the construction of the White Sea Canal, or Stalin Canal (1931-33) -using a less startlingly inventive approach than in his earlier work, he produced about three thousand photographs, some of which were published in a special 1933 edition of USSR in Construction, a magazine intended to show Soviet progress, especially to audiences abroad -tellingly, Rodchenko did not focus on the use of forced labor, or the deaths of thousand of workers at the site-- subjects forbidden by the propaganda controls enforced in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership in the 1930s -the jumbled appearance of photomontage was more than formal inventiveness; it was a token of the quick changes and disruptions of modern life that seemed, in the period immediately after WWI and the Russian Revolution, to promise progressive social change

Dada as predecessor

involved with the dying Embers of Dada in Paris when he first arrived in 19 21 22 which Dan evolve into the surrealist movement led by Andre Brett Hall was never a member of the movement but he was eventually sort of The Unofficial photographer portraits we see -one theory is important piece of Photography it was devised originally as an artistic technique by the dada's Berlin tool however the Cynthia of cutting and pasting sandwich a photographic images as an expressive way of using photography -It was in New York that he became acquainted with a new art movement emerging from Switzerland: Dada. Dadaists denounced the ideologies of nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism that they believed caused the First World War that was tearing apart the European continent. A group of artists led by Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara among others, represented an artistic anarchy. Dadaists rejected previous forms of art, which they viewed as constraining and complacent in its contribution to society and war. Instead, according to Man Ray, Dadaists sought to create new art for the modern age and make useful objects into something useless. 1 Man Ray started a group of Dadaists in New York to collaborate with the European artists, however, their artwork was never well-received in the United States. Man Ray wrote to Tzara that: "dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival, - will not notice dada." After the rejection of his own work, and of the Dadaist movement in New York, Man Ray decided to move to Paris. In Paris, Man Ray quickly became a part of a community of like-minded artists, many of whom participated in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. It was in Paris that Man Ray began photographing many of the famous artists of the era -Dada was an attempt to create work so absurd it confused the viewer's sense of reality. The dadaists would take everyday objects and present them as if they were finished works of art. -Dada started in Zurich in 1916 disgusted by the Carnage of World War 1 freethinkers such as Tristan tzara thumb their noses at tradition. Pressing artistic Anarchy they sought to liberate art from restrictingNotions of form.The Dada is created an entirely new art for theirModern Age. -It is not hard to understand how the Dada movement in Europe Drew on artist reactions to The Killing Fields of World War II -More puzzling is the post-war zest that propels extensive experimentation. In a 1921 article, English artist and writer Percy Wyndham Lewis to Claire. "we are at the beginning of a new Epoch, fresh to it, the first babes of a new and certainly better Day." -The huge gush of experimental photography after the war was propelled by the buoyant, sometimes militant perception that the war's Devastation shattered Victorian conventions of artistic conduct and generated a new, modern Covenant with the social world -In the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, some artists began to think of themselves as social Engineers, reshaping Optical experience -In Germany, and in the territories once under its control, the dogma of a new vision propelled multidisciplinary art exploration intended to shake up vestiges of the past while shaping the future -in this heady atmosphere, creators working in film and photography underscored the notion that their media were not only similar to each other but also like the proliferating Illustrated newspapers and magazines read by the public -That each spawned a rapidly changing, sometimes confusing, but always exciting jumble of successive images oscillating at the speed of Modern Life --during World War I, a group of writers, artists, and poets met at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, a cultural outpost in a politically neutral country -the group strongly objected to the war and to the bankrupt materialism of the age -they envisioned a new art that expressed their despair, but that would also sweep away tiresome conventions and intellectual barriers -the Romanian-born artist Tristan Tzara, who wrote the Dada Manifesto of 1918, saw the task to be done as "a great negative work of destruction" -the origins of the name "Dada" seem to owe to a moment when two enthusiasts thrust a paper knife into a French-German dictionary, and it pointed to the word "dada," or hobby horse -the nonsensical-sounding word may have been chosen because it has different meanings in several European languages, such as "yes, yes" in Romanian and "there, there" in German -through the visual arts and performances, Dada accentuated the disruptiveness of chance collisions of images and sounds -Christian Schad (1894-1982), a German artist associated with the Zurich Dada group, was influenced by the French artist and poet Jean (or Hans) Arp (1887-1966), who emphasized the need to be unconstrained by sculptural collages of found objects -Schad, too, created small collages of newspaper clippings and odd bits of paper, and used a similar method to make abstract photographs were acquired by Tzara, who dubbed them "schadographs" -this sounds like "shadowgraph," a process used by such early photographers as Talbot -Tzara may have been aware of this, but was perhaps also alluding to the meaning of the German word schaden, which means "damaged," evoking the Dada sense of things falling apart (Schad placed pieces of randomly collected paper and objects atop photographically sensitive paper, pressing them down with a sheet of clear glass. As the assemblage was exposed to light on a windowsill, Schad observed its development and occasionally moved objects around as they were appearing on the paper) -another group of Dada artists met in Berlin as Germany was disintegrating toward the end of the war -more political than the Zurich Dadaists, they wanted to make social statements -in the words of one of their leaders, Richard Hulsenbeck, "the highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday's crash" -Berlin Dadaists adopted photomontage as a key medium -often the initial Klebebild or "paste picture" was photographed, producing a more finished look, and preparing the image for reproduction in one of the many avant-garde magazines -the origins of the photomontage have long been debated, but it seems that Hannah Hoch (1889-1978) and Hausmann were two of the earliest Dadaists to make such images -Hoch's large photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany) (1919) made its appearance at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin (1920) (in the center a popular dancer of the time pirouettes beneath the head of the artist Kathe Kollwitz. The head has been speared by a man in front of an elephant. The dancer's right foot rests on a giant ball-bearing. Beneath that is a young revolutionary sailor who is saying "Tretet Dada Bei" ("Join Dada"). The word "Dada" is also scattered throughout the work) -as art historian Maud Lavin observed, the diversity of mass-media sources in Hoch's picture testifies to the vast proliferation of newspapers and journals in the years following World War I, and the growing perception that mass-media images were forming a common visual culture -even though the individual images in early photomontage were generally easy to read, their combination yielded pictures whose meaning was difficult to decipher -in effect, photomontage itself was the message of change -nevertheless, some parts of Cut with the Kitchen Knife can be decoded -like American photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, Hoch engaged the theme of the New Woman -she juxtaposed images of smartly dressed contemporary women with women in traditional social roles and with such symbols of modernity as automobiles, machinery, and electric light bulbs -while she criticized contemporary politics and society's hypocrisy toward women as both workers and sexual objects, the jazzy exuberance of her compositions reveals optimism for avant-garde art and the joy of artmaking -during the 1930s, Hoch collaged pictures of objects in German ethnographic collections with symbols of Modernism, so as to contrast Western materialism and non-Western traditional practices -her photomontage series From an Ethnographic Museum produced unsettling effects by juxtaposing snippets of male and female body parts and non-Western sculpture (Monument 1: From an Ethnographic Museum) -Hoch's lover for seven years, Raoul Hausmann, was one of the few communists to insist on women's equality in any new society -more subtle than his copious political writing, Hausmann's photomontage images included his contribution to the 1920 Dada Fair, Tatlin at Home -this photomontage was more an exercise in freewheeling mental associations and concern for artistic form than a penetrating portrait or social critique -for example, Hausmann explained that he added machinery, including an automobile steering wheel, to the main figure's head because he was interested in portraying a man who had machines for brains -the man with his pockets turned inside out was included because Hausmann fancied that Tatlin could not be rich -like many photomontagists, Hausmann painted parts of the picture, such as the background -another Berlin Dadaist, George Grosz (1893-1959), one of the most politically active artists to emerge from the Berlin Dada group, was also a pioneer of photomontage -Grosz's photomontages have a plainly discernible message, expressed in an apparently spontaneous accumulation of images and texts --in Paris, Dadaists turned away from the Berlin group's political activism in order to take up a wide cultural criticism -it was in paris that Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache on a photographic reproduction of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, and relabeled it with a title that sounded lew when read aloud in French (L.H.O.O.Q.; comical addition and bawdy retitling of image express his attitude toward unthinking acceptance of tradition) -before he came to Paris and met with the Dadaists, German painter Max Ernst was already making psychologically disorienting photographic collages amd creating disquieting effects on canvas and paper using such techniques as frottage (rubbing a surface so texture of an object beneath it shows on surface) -eerie enigmas pervaded his work (Physiomythological Diluvian Picture combines the optical realism of a photograph (the woman's head) with media suggestive either of flatness or perspective allowed Ernst and Arp to create an image full of puzzling contradictions) -Ernst had little respect for the Berlin Dada's political orientation: "German intellectuals can't even shit or piss without ideology" -Andre Breton, one of the leaders of Paris Dada, praised Ernst and lauded his photography, relating it to the Dada practice of automatic writing -this entailed writing or speaking a haphazard sequence of words to evade the censorship of the rational mind: "Automatic writing is a true photography of thought" -Breton's curiosity about psychic states led him toward psychology, especially the theories of Sigmund Freud, which suggested that human behavior is motivated by forces and desires hidden deep within the human psyche, which individuals and society are generally reluctant to acknowledge -around 1924, Breton rejected the anarchism of Dada, which relied on an ability (difficult to sustain indefinitely) to shock, disturb, or outrage viewers -he sought a more constructive program that would still be based on the power of the unconscious and irrational mind -this led to the founding of the Surrealist movement, of which Breton became one of the major theorists -the Surrealist movement was born in Paris in the mid-1920s -unlike Dada, which always remained individualistic, Surrealism was a self-proclaimed movement

mise-en-abyme

picture within a picture -an idea that was originally derived from medieval heraldic Crest you know that are often divided into quadrants and there are some of them where one of the quadrants then is yet another press and so you can wind up with that technically infinite regress of the Christ within so this structure of the Muse on a beam is something that was utilized quite interesting we buy some of these surrealist photographers here we have an image by very early in his career first became a photographer he was fairly closely associated with the surrealist and so strong he went on World War II and Beyond Two Become One of the world's leading photojournalist in this particular image the plaster the whole word also known as the puddle jumper behind the Lazar in Paris sort of a waste of space from the backside of the Industrial train station and we have here a space where obviously it's flooded another was a large pool of water and people in order to Traverse this puddle giant puddle have I laid down the ladder and various kinds of things to be stepping stones I guess to get across and here until we got to the point where he had to take a leak to get across the wide response of it this is literally photography and shooting fish in a barrel 3 BTU heater is the doubling that goes on this Muse on a beam character is something that is the entire image was clear one obviously is the silhouette of the leaping man which is then converted in the reflection pool water below so that's one set of doubling however everything in this in the image is doubled so we got in that on the back wall the posters and you'll see one of the posters has a figure of a leaping so silhouette of a leaping man and it's actually paired the second one is an obscured by whatever alongside of it so so there's the leaving person that's sort of technically doubles and then the doubling of that name but oh no there's more than that we've doubled leaping person is doubled yet again in her collection in the water right so we got this. Doubles of doubles it's sort of an image origami of the structure that called her attention to the very fact of representation itself so again rather than focusing strictly on perception of what one sees understanding that in the field of what one sees it's already always already in representation somehow that we are making a representation to ourselves in our very conceptions how we want to look at these things

The New Vision

school of thought in photographic practice that championed unexpected vantage points and playful printing techniques to engender a fresh rapport with the visible world, moving beyond what we see with the eye. -Moholy-Nagy was influential in organizing the international 1929 "Film und Foto" exhibition held in Stuttgart, Germany, to which he contributed 97 photographs. Photomontages, and photograms -at Fifo, as the exhibition was called, viewers could see how far photography had changed from the fuzzy look and rural subjects of the turn-of-the-century Pictorialism -collectively, the Fifo photographs dwelled on the urban-industrial environment, emphasizing form and texture -borrowing the name of a contemporary German art movement, observers described such work as exemplifying the New Objectivity -more imprecise terms such as "new Vision", "Modernist Photography," or "New Photography," were also used to denote the emphasis placed on industrial subjects, close-ups, odd angles, and repeated visual patterns -distinct abilities radio tower of 1928 is very characteristic of method of reading is New Vision using photography the radio tower was a new construction it was essentially the Eiffel Tower of Berlin when it was built the tallest architecture and it was treated actually as a tourist location we are on what was an observation deck that was built into the tower so they were elevators that took one up and the City from the tower which is what most of the tourists want to go see instead turn the camera looking precipitously active plunging perspectives of the power tables and chairs perspective is -there's less of as so much as it is to understand that these new tools the camera movie camera could enable us to see the world in a radically new modern sort of way it was utterly in keeping with the names of the Bauhaus engage Photography in this fashion and it's while there are certain kind of strong formal elements in these photographs the approach to the medium is much more head erogenous than what one sees among American art photography in f64 Friends it's kind of New Vision excitement photography photographers expressing your we have some images by Jermaine Cole who was a German photographer who spent some time at the Bauhaus and also traveled and worked extensively in France in 1928 she published her her photo book focusing on these interesting abstracted views of modern engineering and the machines and mechanisms so then cover features one of these giant wheels that was the flywheel for the elevator going up the Eiffel Tower on the right we see various views of these kinds of the sending metal work in plunging juice down Railway siding that seems beautiful to me this form all of which are tied together by the fact that they are using metal material of construction

Georges Bataille

the concept of l'informe or formless which was one of the major ideas proposed by George bataille Thai defines this notion with an interesting definition he writes a dictionary begins with it no longer gives the meaning of words but their tasks the formless or laugh form is not only an adjectives having a given meaning but a term that serves to bring things down in the world generally requiring that each state have its form what it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere like a spider or an earthworm in fact core academic meant to be happy the universe would have to take shape all the philosophy has no other goal it is a matter of giving a frock-coat to what is a mathematical frock-coat on the other hand affirming that the Universe resembles nothing and is only formulas amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit wait but I saw accomplish with this notion of formless was nothing less than the very undoing of all of Western philosophy metaphysics all of that sir traditional Endeavors that claim to stake meaning higher meaning privacy of thought over matter that we saw the 4in man race solarized image here in the foggy night time mysterious kind of atmosphere of the Avenue did it so that's why in Paris we see the car coming down the street with its headlights on and the streetlights to the park in a disappearing Into The Mists that this is a space in which darkness and matter seem to follow up almost there a possibility of form