Photography itself makes the case for artificial light in this commission for the German manufacturer Osram. Leveraging the camera’s codependence on their products, the lightbulb company sought out experimental practitioners, including August Sander, to promote the transformative potential of illumination. Sander is best known as the great portraitist of German society between the wars, but the commercial projects that supported his studio remain obscure. With a simple shift in perspective, he radically reorients viewer and subject, abstracting a spiral staircase into a swirl of pearls. His hypnotic image reveals how the shock and pleasure of modernist aesthetics—of looking for its own sake—could seamlessly convey the joys of consumption.
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[Sander Gallery to Waddell, April 11, 1982]; John C. Waddell
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. "Alfred Hitchcock," November 16, 2000–March 18, 2001.
Centre Georges Pompidou. "Alfred Hitchcock," June 6, 2001–September 30, 2001.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art. "Reimagining Modernism - Photographs Rotation 1," July 21–November 16, 2014.
Naef, Weston J., Sandra S. Phillips, and David Travis. André Kertész: Of Paris and New York. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985. no. 65, p. 160.
Hambourg, Maria Morris. The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 107.
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![[Osram Light Bulbs], August Sander (German, 1876–1964), Gelatin silver print](/Rodan/dist/svg/rolling-0.9s-30px.svg)
