1. INTERWAR PHOTOGRAPHY EUROPE AND THE US

3. (left) El Lissitzky Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge , 1919-20 (right) Soviet propaganda poster featuring the destruction of White Poland, 1919 Russian Constructivist form versus cartoon realist propaganda: Russian formalism’s “armed vision” failed to communicate to the “masses.”

4. El Lissitzky , (left) agit-prop panel photographed on the streets of Vitebsk in 1920, reads: "The Machine tool depots of the factories and plants await you. Let's get industry moving." Compare with WW II Stalinist propaganda poster: “Stalin leads”

5. Gustav Klutsis (Latvian Russian, 1895-1938), (left) The Electrification of the Entire Country , photomontage,1920; (right) Klutsis , The USSR is the Stock Brigade of the World’s Proletariat , photomontage, 1931 (center) October Revolution marks the beginning of avant-garde modern art as part of the government propaganda bureau – “agitation and propaganda” ( agitprop ) Lenin in St. Petersburg after the storming of the winter palace, 1917 Modernist form employed for political propaganda

7. Alexander Rodchenko (left) Spatial Construction / Spatial Object , 1921 (right) Rodchenko with spatial constructions, wearing industrial suit designed by Stepanova. Photograph by Mikhail Kaufman,1924

8. (left) Alexander Rodchenko , Gathering for the demonstration in the courtyard of the VChUTEMAS (Higher Institute of Technics and Art), 1928 (right) Vchutemas student constructivist exhibition, 1925

9. (left) Cover page by Rodchenko for Vladimir Mayakovsky's book length poem, Pro Eto ( About This ), 1923. Rodchenko’s first photomontage Shostakovich, Meyerhold, Mayakovsky Rodchenko, rehearsing Klop, 1929 New music, theater, poetry, and art for the revolution

10. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass , charcoal and papier collé, November 1912. New media of papier collé and collage pioneered by the cubists in the decade before WWI

12. Rodchenko , Poster for film, Battleship Potemkin, by Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 Still from the Odessa steps massacre, famous scene in Battleship Potemkin

13. Jan Tschichold , poster for Film und Foto exhibition, Stuttgart, 1929 Exhibition of over 1000 photographic works from Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States, including movie stills, and demonstrating reciprocal uses of camera angles, montages, and superimpositions that were rapidly appropriated for mainstream movies.

14. “ What is being stressed is the manifest presence of the means of production, and an implicit rejection of the notion of the photograph as either transparent or neutral.” - Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Armed Vision Disarmed” Rodchenko , Chauffeur – Karelia , 1933. Rodchenko makes his own presence obvious.

15. Alexander Rodchenko , On the telephone , 1928 1928 Rodchenko, who gave up painting for photography in 1927, bought himself a Leica which, because of its handy format and quick operation, became his preferred tool for his work. This camera enabled him to realize his ideas of unusual camera positions, severe foreshortenings of perspective, and views of surprising details. "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.“ -Rodchenko

16. Shukhov tower – “a symbol of collective effort” – was designed to be 350 m in height. But it required 2200 tons of steel. Young Soviet Russia did not have enough metal. Thus Shukhov had to decrease height to 150 m. Lenin personally ordered 240 tons of high quality German Ruhr steel from military stocks. Rodchenko , Shukhov Radio Tower , 1928 Vladimir Tatlin Monument to The Third International , l920, TOWERS OF COMMUNIST ASPIRATION

17. El Lissitzky (Russian 1890-1941) (left) The Constructor , 1924, photomontage - the new artist-engineer (right) El Lissitzky , Proun 1d, 1922, oil on canvas

18. (left) Rodchenko , Shukhov Radio Tower , 1928 (right) László Moholy-Nagy (American, born Hungarian, Constructivist artist, ca.1895-1946), Untitled (View from the Berlin Radio Tower onto chairs and tables), ca.1928 The “New Vision” = functionalism and technologism

20. The Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, designed by German architect, Walter Gropius . In 1923 Moholy Nagy was hired to instruct the metalwork shop, marking a shift from craft to mechanical production. The same year (1923) the school slogan was changed from “A Cathedral of Socialism” based on the Medieval cathedral workshop ( bauhaus ) to “Art and Technology – A New Unity” based on the machine-production-industrial aesthetic “ The New Vision”

21. László Moholy-Nagy , Photogram, ca. 1924. The medium is the light-sensitive paper. No camera. “The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light….opens up perspectives of a hitherto wholly unknown morphosis …. It is the most completely dematerialized medium which the new vision commands.” - - Moholy-Nagy, “From Pigment to Light,” 1936 “ Formalism for Moholy signified above all the absolute primacy of the material, the medium itself.”

23. (left) Moholy-Nagy , Bauhaus Balcony , 1926 (right) Rodchenko , Gathering for the demonstration in the courtyard of the VChUTEMAS (Higher Institute of Technics and Art), 1928 “ The New Vision”

24. Moholy-Nagy , Chairs at Margate , 1935, gelatin silver print diptych Multiples like mass production = machine aesthetic

25. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/lichtspiel/ (left) László Moholy-Nagy , Light Prop , 1930 In 1937, at the invitation of the Chairman of the Container Corporation of America, Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus and in 1939, the Chicago School of Design. In 1944, this became the Institute of Design. Still from Light Display: Black-White-Gray Moholy-Nagy

26. Rodchenko , White Sea Canal , 1933 Commissioned by Stalin to document the construction of the canal, Rodchenko did not record the use of forced labor, nor the deaths of thousands of workers at the site.

27. Berlin Dada First Dada Fair , Berlin, 1920

28. Raoul Hausmann (Austrian Dadaist active in Germany, 1886-1971), Tatlin at Home , 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada According to Hausmann, the Dadaists agreed on the term “photomontage” because of “our aversion at playing the artist and, thinking of ourselves as engineers … we meant to construct, to assemble our works.”

29. Hannah Höch (German, 1889 - 1978), Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany , 1919, Berlin Dada Raoul Hausmann & Hannah Höch at 1920 Berlin Dada Fair (right) An “Armed Vision”

30. (left) Hannah Höch , Pretty Woman, 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada (right) Hannah Höch , Dada Ernst , 1920, photomontage, Berlin Dada

31. John Heartfield (Born Herzfelde, German, 1891-1968) front covers of the newspaper AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung / Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper), all 1932-33 (left) The Butcher Goering; (center) Millions Stand Behind Me ; (right) Hurrah, The Butter is Gone! Berlin Dada An “Armed Vision”

32. On 10. May 1933, 20.000 books were burnt in the then Opernplatz, later Bebel Platz, adjacent to the Opera House. Among the authors whose books were burnt were Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Mann, Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Helen Keller, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Emil Zola, Sigmund Freud. Arthur Kampf (German, 1865-1950) January 30, 1933 (election night in Berlin) Book burning, Berlin, May 10, 1933 "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." - Heinrich Heine

33. August Sander (German, 1876-1964), Brick Carrier (left), and Cook (right) 1928 from the Face of Time portfolio

34. August Sander , Wandering People from portfolio, Citizens of the 20 th Century, 1930 Sander’s archive of German “types” was censored by the Nazis as “decadent.”

35. Albert Renger-Patzsch (German 1897 – 1966), New Objectivity Irons Used in Shoemaking, Fagus Works , c. 1925 (left) and Foxgloves , c. 1925 (right)

36. Hans Haacke , German, b.1936, "Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time System, as of May 1, 1971" 1971: 142 photographs of New York apartment buildings, 2 maps of New York's Lower East Side and Harlem with properties marked, 6 charts outlining business relations within the real estate group. Contemporary German Conceptual Photography That “Imposes Order” = Typology

37. Bernhard and Hilla Becher (German, born 1931 and 1934 respectively) Conceptual (typological) photography (left) Gas Tanks , 1963 (right) Water Towers , 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall

38. Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers) Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986 (right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991

39. Candida Höfer ,(Germany, 1944, student of Bechers) (left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III , 2003, C-print, 68 in. H (right) Ca' Rezzonico Venezia II , 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width

40. Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House # 9 II , 1991, 72 in. H one of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany

41. Thomas Ruff , (left) Portrait , 1989, 63in. H (center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies “absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale '... Like archetypal passport photos... young people with dead eyes and empty faces.' Ruff

44. Edward Weston, Neil, 1922, platinotype A series of photographs of his son Neil Modernist fragmentation “ seeing of parts – fragments – as universal symbols” - Weston Auguste Rodin , Walking Man, 1906

47. (left) Edward Weston , Maguey, Mexico , 1926, gsp (right) Tina Modotti (Italian, 1896 -1942) , Mexico , 1925, platinum print

52. Modernist “purity” or “ essence” of form Compare Brancusi’s 19 th c. Classical Realism (c.1900) with his modernism of 1915 Brancusi, Newborn , 1915 marble Brancusi’s studio c.1900

53. (left) Constantin Brancusi , The Muse, 1912, marble (right) Edward Weston , Nude, 1936, gelatin silver print "I feel that I have been more deeply moved by music, literature, sculpture, painting, than I have by photography." - Weston

54. When Weston saw the work of sculptor Constantin Brancusi for the first time he found one piece "curiously like one of my peppers," but he noted, "I have proved through photography that nature has all the abstract (simplified) forms that Brancusi or any other artist could imagine. With my camera I go direct to Bancusi's source. I find,... select and isolate what he has to 'create.' "

55. Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) , Golden Gate Before the Bridge San Francisco, California , 1932

68. Chicago Institute of Design (I.D.) Formalist Photography “Disarmed Vision” influenced more by American photography and social situation than by “Armed” Russian and Weimar Formalist visions. Moholy-Nagy , Still from Light Display: Black-White-Gray, 1930 Imogen Cunningham , Agave, 1930

69. Harry Callahan (American 1912-1999) , Detroit , 1941, gelatin silver print, Chicago Institute of Design Callahan, deeply influenced by Ansel Adams, was hired by Moholy-Nagy to teach at the I.D. in 1946. “Calahan was as far removed from the machine-age ethic of Bauhaus photography as anybody possibly could be….The ‘interior shape of private expreienc’ coupled with a rigorous concern for formal values effectively constituted Callahan’s approach to photograpy, and this, more than any of Moholy’s theoretical formulations, constituted the mainstream of American art photography through the 1960s.” - Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Armed Vision Disarmed”

70. Harry Callahan , Eleanor , 1947 and (right) Eleanor, Chicago , 1949 I.D. Formalism: A “Disarmed Vision”

71. (left) Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) Jerome, Arizona , 1949, gelatin silver print , Chicago I.D. (right) Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985), Aaron Siskind, Old Yuma Jail (detail), 1947

72. (left) Aaron Siskind , Jerome, Arizona , 1949, gelatin silver print, Chicago I.D. & Abstract Expressionism (right) Franz Kline (American Abstract Expressionist Painter, 1910-1962), Siskind , oil on canvas,1959 American post-WW II formalism = “disarmed vision”

73. (left) Franz Kline , Palmerton, Pa., oil on canvas, 1941, Social Realism (right) Aaron Siskind , Boys Playing With Toy Swords, Harlem , New York , ca.1930-1940, Social Realism “ Armed Visions” before the “Disarmament” of post-WW II American art

75. Walker Evans (American 1903 -1975), two of three photographs for the The Bridge by Hart Crane (1899-1932) 1930. Evan’s first publication and Crane’s major work, the book-length poem, The Bridge , expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the historical and spiritual significance of America. Crane used the landscape of the modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature. Evans was hired by the FSA in 1935.

77. Walker Evans , Hale County, Alabama (Allie Mae Burroughs) , 1936, from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , by Walker Evans and James Agee, published in 1941, gelatin silver print Chronicle of the lives of three families of poor cotton-growing tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama

78. Walker Evans , Subway Portrait, New York , 1938-41 One of series of anonymous New York subway passengers published in 1966 as Many Are Called

79. Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965), White Angel Bread Line , 1932 “The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, ’how did you do it, where did you find it, ‘ but they would say that such things could be.” - Dorothea Lange

80. Dorothea Lange , Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California , 1935 The Dust Bowl 1940 movie based on the novel by John Steinbeck, Grapes Of Wrath

81. Dorothea Lange , Migrant Mother , 1936

82. Reading: Paul Taylor, “Migrant Mother: 1936,” 1970

83. Caption : "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute.“ - Lange “ Armed Vision”

84. Lange immediately gave her photos to the San Francisco News. Migrant Mother was published anonymously in newspapers across the US.

85. Robert Frank (Swiss-born American Photographer, born in 1924), The Americans , 1955 Charleston, South Carolina Elevator - Miami Beach