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Fotogramm

László Moholy-Nagy American, born Hungary
1926
Not on view
Moholy-Nagy played a key role at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau as a painter, graphic artist, teacher, and impassioned advocate of avant-garde photography. He made this image without a camera by placing ordinary objects, including his hand and a paintbrush, on a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposing it to light. While this simple process was practiced by photography's founders in the nineteenth century and was later popularized as a child's amusement, avant-garde artists in the twentieth century revived the photogram technique as a means for exploring the optical and expressive properties of light. With this shadow-image of a hand and paintbrush, Moholy-Nagy ambitiously suggests that photography may incorporate, and even transcend, painting as the most vital medium of artistic expression in the modern age.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Fotogramm
  • Artist: László Moholy-Nagy (American (born Hungary), Borsod 1895–1946 Chicago, Illinois)
  • Date: 1926
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 23.9 × 17.9 cm (9 7/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
    Mount: 33.1 × 27.9 cm (13 1/16 in. × 11 in.)
    Frame: 21 × 17 in. (53.3 × 43.2 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
  • Object Number: 1987.1100.158
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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