Photogram.

An Untitled 1926 montaged photogram shows direct traces of the shadow of László's face and his glasses on light-sensitive paper. The glasses are removed from his face and placed directly on the paper so that they are associated with his eyes but no longer functional for him; likewise, they appear as lenses in conjunction with Moholy-Nagy's "cameraless" photography, so that they are highlighted as objects rather than instruments. The photogram functions as a self-portrait: it shows aspects of Moholy-Nagy's face exposed in a direct yet atypical photographic form; the shadow that it casts and the fluids that it secreted, display a range of ideas about representation and manifestation of thought.

The legacy of Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy is among the most cherished in the lineage of photographic art, and he can be defined as a visionary whose radical experiments with photography entirely re-imagined the possibilities for the medium. Working in the early 20th century when photography was not considered a form of high art, Moholy-Nagy actively sought to break down boundaries and find new languages of photographic discourse. In doing so, he left behind an oeuvre of visual ideas that have provided artistic license to a century’s worth of photographers to experiment boldly beyond the conventional definitions of what photography is expected to be.

Edition: 1 of 1