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Work 10,257 of 27,955
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Umbo (Otto Umbehr) (German, 1902–1980)

[Mystery of the Street], 1928

Gelatin silver print; 29 x 23.5 cm (11 7/16 x 9 1/4 in.)

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987 (1987.1100.49)

© Galerie Rudolf Kicken, Cologne and Phyllis Umbehr, Frankfurt/M.

This photograph does not describe what Otto Umbehr saw when he looked out his window in Berlin, but what he discovered when he turned his overhead view of the street upside-down. His simple inversion (indicated by his signature "Umbo" in the lower right corner) posits an unsettling world in which the insubstantial dominates the substantial, and imagination intercepts cognition.