MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015
The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor
Exhibition Coincides with the Culmination of the Thomas Walther Collection Project, a
Four-Year Research Collaboration Between MoMA’s Curatorial and Conservation Staff
Explores photography between the First and Second World Wars, when creative
possibilities were never richer or more varied, and when photographers approached
figuration, abstraction, and architecture with unmatched imaginative fervor. This vital
moment is dramatically captured in the photographs that constitute the Thomas Walther
Collection, a remarkable group of works presented together for the first time through
nearly 300 photographs. Made on the street and in the studio, intended for avant-garde
exhibitions or the printed page, these objects provide unique insight into the radical
intentions of their creators. Iconic works by such towering figures as Berenice Abbott, Karl
Blossfeldt, Alvin Langdon Coburn, El Lissitzky, Lucia Moholy, László Moholy- Nagy,
Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Paul Strand are featured alongside lesser-known treasures by
more than 100 other practitioners. The exhibition is organized by Quentin Bajac, the Joel
and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, and Sarah Hermanson Meister,
Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA.
The exhibition coincides with Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas
Walther Collection 1909–1949, the result of a four-year collaborative project between the
Museum’s departments of Photography and Conservation, with the participation of over
two dozen leading international photography scholars and conservators, making it the
most extensive effort to integrate conservation, curatorial, and scholarly research efforts
on photography to date. That project is composed of multiple parts including a website
that features a suite of digital visualization research tools that allow visitors to explore the
collection, a hard-bound paper catalogue of the entire Thomas Walther collection, and an
interdisciplinary symposium focusing on ways in which the digital age is changing our
engagement with historic photographs.
Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949, is organized
thematically into six sections, suggesting networks between artists, regions, and objects,
and highlighting the figures whose work Walther collected in depth, including André
Kertész, Germaine Krull, Franz Roh, Willi Ruge, Maurice Tabard, Umbo, and Edward
Weston. Enriched by key works in other mediums from MoMA's collection, this exhibition
presents the exhilarating story of a landmark chapter in photography’s history.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1496
Even before the introduction of the handheld Leica camera in 1925, photographers were
avidly exploring fresh perspectives, shaped by the unique experience of capturing the
world through a lens and ideally suited to express the tenor of modern life in the wake of
World War I. Looking up and down, these photographers found unfamiliar points of view
that suggested a new, dynamic visual language freed from convention. Improvements in
the light sensitivity of photographic films and papers meant that photographers could
capture motion as never before. At the same time, technological advances in printing
resulted in an explosion of opportunities for photographers to present their work to
ever-widening audiences. From inexpensive weekly magazines to extravagantly produced
journals, periodicals exploited the potential of photographs and imaginative layouts, not
text, to tell stories. Among the photographers on view in this section are Martin Munkácsi
(American, born Hungary, 1896–1963), Leni Riefenstahl (German, 1902–2003), Aleksandr
Rodchenko (Russian, 1891–1956), and Willi Ruge (German, 1882–1961).
WILLI RUGE ( GERMAN 1882–1961 )
WITH MY HEAD HANGING DOWN BEFORE THE PARACHUTE OPENED… 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions Image: 14 × 20.3 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO ( RUSSIAN 1891–1956 )
DIVE 1934
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions Image: 29.7 x 23.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange
WILLI RUGE ( GERMAN 1882 - 1961 )
SECONDS BEFORE LANDING SECONDS BEFORE LANDING
From the Series – I Photograph Myself during a Parachute Jump 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions Image: 20.4 × 14.1 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
LENI RIEFENSTAHL ( GERMAN 1902–2003 )
UNTITLED 1936
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions Image: 23.4 x 29.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by Exchange
WANDA WULZ ( ITALIAN 1903 - 1984 )
EXERCISE 1932
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1932- 1939
Dimensions Image: 29.2 × 21.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
© Fratelli Alinari Museum Collections-Studio Wulz Archive, Florence
ROBERT PETSCHOW ( GERMAN 1888 – 1945 )
LINES OF MODERN INDUSTRY: COOLING TOWER 1920 - 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1920 - 1932
Dimensions Image: 8.5 × 11.5 cm - Sheet: 8.8 × 11.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Albert Renger-Patzsch, by Exchange
2- PURISM
The question of whether photography ought to be considered a fine art was hotly
contested from its invention in 1839 into the 20th century. Beginning in the 1890s, in an
attempt to distinguish their efforts from hoards of Kodak-wielding amateurs and masses
of professionals, “artistic” photographers referred to themselves as Pictorialists. They
embraced soft focus and painstakingly wrought prints so as to emulate contemporary
prints and drawings, and chose subjects that underscored the ethereal effects of their
methods. Before long, however, most avant-garde photographers had come to celebrate
precise and distinctly photographic qualities as virtues. On both sides of the Atlantic,
photographers were making this transition from Pictorialism to modernism, while
occasionally blurring the distinction. Exhibition prints could be made with precious
platinum or palladium, or matte surfaces that mimicked those materials. Perhaps
nowhere is this variety more clearly evidenced than in the work of Edward Weston,
whose suite of prints in this section suggests the range of appearances achievable with
unadulterated contact prints from his large-format negatives. Other photographers on
view include Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865 - 1932), Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican,
1902–2002), Jaromír Funke (Czech, 1896 - 1945), Bernard Shea Horne (American, 1867 -
1933), and Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864 - 1946).
JAROSLAV ROSSLER ( CZECH 1902 – 1990 )
UNTITLED 1923 - 1925
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1923 - 1935
Dimensions Image: 22.1 × 21.8 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund
Through Robert B. Menschel
© 2014 Sylva Vitove-Rösslerova
BERNARD SHEA HORNE ( AMERICAN 1867 – 1933 )
UNTITLED 1916 - 1917
Platinum Print
Print Date 1916 - 1917
Dimensions Image: 20.3 × 15.5 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
EDWARD WESTON ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1958 )
ATTIC 1921
Palladium Print
Dimensions: 18.9 × 23.9 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Grace M. Mayer Fund and gift of Mrs. Mary Donant and Carl Sandburg, by Exchange
BERNARD SHEA HORNE ( AMERICAN 1867 – 1933 )
UNTITLED 1916 - 1917
Platinum Print
Print Date 1916 - 1917
Dimensions Image: 20.5 × 15.5 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
Grace M. Mayer Fund and gift of Mrs. Mary Donant and Carl Sandburg, by Exchange
JAROMÍR FUNKE ( CZECH 1896–1945 )
PLATES 1923 - 1924
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions Image: 21.5 × 29.3 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange
EDWARD WESTON ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1958 )
STEEL: ARMCO, MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - 1922
Palladium Print - Print Date 1922
Dimensions Image: 23 × 17.4 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© 1981 Center for Creative Photography,
Arizona Board of Regents.
EDWARD WESTON ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1958 )
STEEL: ARMCO, MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - 1922
DESCRIPTION
In Edward Weston’s journals, which he began on his trip to Ohio and New York in fall
1922, the artist wrote of the exhilaration he felt while photographing the “great plant and
giant stacks of the American Rolling Mill Company” in Middletown, Ohio. He then went to
see the great photographer and tastemaker Alfred Stieglitz. Were he still publishing the
magazine Camera Work, Stieglitz told him, he would have reproduced some of Weston’s
recent images in it, including, in particular, one of his smokestacks. The photograph’s
clarity and the photographer’s frank awe at the beauty of the brute industrial subject
seemed clear signs of advanced modernist tendencies.
In moving away from the soft focus and geometric stylization of his recent images, such as
Attic of 1921 (MoMA 1902.2001), Weston was discovering a more straightforward
approach, one of considered confrontation with the facts of the larger world much like
that of his close friend Johan Hagemeyer, who was photographing such modern subjects
as smokestacks, telephone wires, and advertisements. Shortly before his trip east,
Weston had met R. M. Schindler, the Austrian architect, and had been excited by his
unapologetically spare, modern house and its implications for art and design. Weston was
also reading avant-garde European art magazines full of images and essays extolling
machines and construction. Stimulated by these currents, Weston saw that by the time he
got to Ohio he was “ripe to change, was changing, yes changed.”
The visit to Armco was the critical pivot, the hinge between Weston’s Pictorialist past and
his modernist future. It marked a clear leave-taking from his bohemian circle in Los
Angeles and the first step toward the cosmopolitan connections he made in New York and
in Mexico City, where he moved a few months later to live with the Italian actress and
artist Tina Modotti. The Armco photographs went with him and became talismans of the
sea change, emblematic works that decorated his studio in Mexico, along with a Japanese
print and a print by Picasso. When he sent a representation of his best work to the Film
und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929, one of the smokestacks was included.
In the midst of such transformation, Weston maintained tried-and-true darkroom
procedures. He had used an enlarger in earlier years but had abandoned the technique
because he felt that too much information was lost in the projection. Instead he
increasingly favored contact printing. To make the smokestack print, Weston enlarged his
3 ¼ by 4 ¼ inch (8.3 by 10.8 centimeter) original negative onto an 8 by 10 inch (20.3 by
25.4 centimeter) interpositive transparency, which he contact printed to a second sheet
of film in the usual way, creating the final 8 by 10 inch negative. Weston was frugal; he
was known to economize by purchasing platinum and palladium paper by the roll from
Willis and Clements in England and trimming it to size. He exposed a sheet of palladium
paper to the sun through the negative and, after processing the print, finished it by
applying aqueous retouching media to any flaws. The fragile balance of the photograph’s
chemistry, however, is evinced in a bubble-shaped area of cooler tonality hovering over
the central stacks. The print was in Modotti’s possession at the time of her death in
Mexico City, in 1942.
—Lee Ann Daffner, Maria Morris Hambourg
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/84082.html
JAROSLAV RÖSSLER ( CZECH 1902–1990 )
UNTITLED 1924
Pigment Print
Dimensions Image: 23 × 23 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund Through Robert B. Menschel
3- REINVENTING PHOTOGRAPHY
In 1925, László Moholy-Nagy articulated an idea that became central to the New Vision
movement: although photography had been invented 100 years earlier, it was only now
being discovered by the avant-garde circles for all its aesthetic possibilities. As products of
technological culture, with short histories and no connection to the old fine-art
disciplines—which many contemporary artists considered discredited—photography and
cinema were seen as truly modern instruments that offered the greatest potential for
transforming visual habits. From the photogram to solarization, from negative prints to
double exposures, the New Vision photographers explored the medium in countless ways,
rediscovering known techniques and inventing new ones. Echoing the cinematic
experiments of the same period, this emerging photographic vocabulary was rapidly
adopted by the advertising industry, which appreciated the visual efficiency of its bold
simplicity. Florence Henri (Swiss, born America, 1893 - 1982), Edward Quigley (American,
1898 - 1977), Franz Roh (German, 1890 - 1965), Franciszka Themerson and Stefan
Themerson (British, born Poland, 1907 - 1988 and 1910 - 1988), and František Vobecký
(Czech, 1902 - 1991) are among the numerous photographers represented here.
EDMUND KESTING ( GERMAN 1892 – 1970 )
PHOTOGRAM LIGHTBULB 1927
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1927 - 1939
Dimensions Image: 29.6 × 39.7 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by Exchange
© 2014/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Germany
EL LISSITZKY ( RUSSIAN 1890 – 1941 )
KURT SCHWITTERS 1924
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 10.8 × 9.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange
ISTVAN KERNY ( HUNGARIAN 1879 – 1963 )
NEPTUNE 1916
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1916–35
Dimensions Image: 16 cm
FRANCIS BRUGUIERE ( AMERICAN 1879 – 1945 )
VIOLENT INTERVENTION 1925 - 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1925 - 1929
Dimensions Image: 24 x 18.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
© 1991 Kenneth H. Bruguière and Kathleen Bruguière Anderson
ALVIN LANGDON COBURN ( AMERICAN 1882 – 1966 )
VORTOGRAPH 1916 - 1917
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 28.2 x 21.2 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Grace M. Mayer Fund
ADOLF NAVARA ( CZECH, ACTIVE C. 1930S)
UNTITLED C. 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date c. 1930–35
Dimensions Image: 29.5 x 22.8 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
HANS RICHTER ( AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1888 – 1976 )
UNTITLED STILL FROM FILM STUDY ( 1928 ) 1927
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 7.3 x 9.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
MARGARET BOURKE - WHITE ( AMERICAN 1904 – 1971 )
UNTITLED - FEBRUARY 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1931–39
Dimensions Image: 33.5 x 23.4 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of James N. Rosenberg, by Exchange
© 2014 Estate of Margaret Bourke-White/Licensed by VAGA, New York
HANNES MEYER ( SWISS 1889 – 1954 )
FILM 1926
Two Gelatin Silver Prints Mounted on White Cardboard
Print Date 1926
Dimensions Image: 21.2 × 3.4 cm - Mount: 29.6 × 21 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
OSKAR NERLINGER ( GERMAN 1893 – 1969 )
MOTORCYCLE IN THE RACE 1925
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 22 × 17.4 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
STEFAN THEMERSON ( BRITISH, BORN POLAND 1910 – 1988 )
FRANCISZKA THEMERSON ( BRITISH, BORN POLAND 1907 – 1988 )
UNTITLED, FROM MOMENT MUSICAL 1933
Gelatin Silver Prints on White Cardboard
Print Date 1933 - 1935
Dimensions Mount: 37.8 × 39 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by exchange
© 2014 Themerson Estate
FRANZ ROH ( GERMAN 1890 – 1965 )
UNTITLED 1928 - 1933
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1928 - 1935
Dimensions Image: 10.1 × 23.3 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Estate Franz Roh, Munich
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949
THE COLLECTION
In the 1920s and ’30s photography underwent a period of exploration, experimentation,
technical innovation, and graphic discovery so dramatic that it generated repeated claims
that the true age of discovery was not when photography was invented but when it came
of age, in this era, as a dynamic, infinitely flexible, and easily transmissible medium. The
Thomas Walther Collection concentrates on that second moment of growth. The Walther
Collection’s 341 photographs by almost 150 artists, most of them European, together
convey a period of collective innovation that is now celebrated as one of the major
episodes of modern art.
THE PROJECT
Our research is based on the premise that photographs of this period were not born as
disembodied images; they are physical things—discrete objects made by certain
individuals at particular moments using specific techniques and materials. Shaped by its
origin and creation, the photographic print harbors clues to its maker and making, to the
causes it may have served, and to the treatment it has received, and these bits of
information, gathered through close examination of the print, offer fresh perspectives on
the history of the era. “Object:Photo”—the title of this study—reflects this approach.
In 2010, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave the Museum a grant to encourage deep
scholarly study of the Walther Collection and to support publication of the results. Led by
the Museum’s Departments of Photography and Conservation, the project elicited
productive collaborations among scholars, curators, conservators, and scientists, who
investigated all of the factors involved in the making, appearance, condition, and history
of each of the 341 photographs in the collection. The broadening of narrow
specializations and the cross-fertilization between fields heightened appreciation of the
singularity of each object and of its position within the history of its moment. Creating
new standards for the consideration of photographs as original objects and of
photography as an art form of unusually rich historical dimensions, the project affords
both experts and those less familiar with its history new avenues for the appreciation of
the medium. The results of the project are presented in multiple parts: on the website, in
a hard-bound paper catalogue of the entire Thomas Walther Collection (also titled
Object:Photo), and through an interdisciplinary symposium focusing on the ways in which
the digital age is changing our engagement with historic photographs.
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/the_project.html#intro
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, The Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to
being the foremost museum of modern art in the world.
Through the leadership of its Trustees and staff, The Museum of Modern Art manifests
this commitment by establishing, preserving, and documenting a collection of the highest
order that reflects the vitality, complexity and unfolding patterns of modern and
contemporary art; by presenting exhibitions and educational programs of unparalleled
significance; by sustaining a library, archives, and conservation laboratory that are
recognized as international centers of research; and by supporting scholarship and
publications of preeminent intellectual merit.
Central to The Museum of Modern Art’s mission is the encouragement of an ever-deeper
understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse local,
national, and international audiences that it serves. You may read more about MoMA’s
entire information to click below link.
http://press.moma.org/about/
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Walther Collection is particularly suited to such a study because its photographs are
so various in technique, geography, genre, and materials as to make it a mine of diverse
data. The revolutions in technology that made the photography of this period so flexible
and responsive to the impulse of the operator threw open the field to all comers. The
introduction of the handheld Leica in 1925 (a small camera using strips of 35mm
motion-picture film), of enlargers to make positive prints from the Leica’s little negatives,
and of easy-to-use photographic papers—each of these was respectively a watershed
event. Immediately sensing the potential of these tools, artists began to explore the
medium; without any specialized training, painters such as László Moholy-Nagy and
Aleksandr Rodchenko could become photographers and teachers almost overnight.
Excitedly and with an open sense of possibility, they freely experimented in the darkroom
and in the studio, producing negative prints, collages and photomontages, photograms,
solarizations, and combinations of these. Legions of serious amateurs also began to
photograph, and manufacturers produced more types of cameras with different
dimensions and capacities: besides the Leica, there was the Ermanox, which could
function in low light, motion-picture cameras that could follow and stop action, and many
varieties of medium- and larger-format cameras that could be adapted for easy transport.
The industry responded to the expanding range of users and equipment with a bonanza of
photographic papers in an assortment of textures, colors, and sizes. Multiple purposes
also generated many kinds of prints: best for reproduction in books or newspapers were
slick, ferrotyped glossies, unmounted and small enough to mail, while photographs for
exhibition were generally larger and mounted to stiff boards. Made by practitioners
ranging from amateurs to professional portraitists, journalists, illustrators, designers,
critics, and artists of all stripes, the pictures in the Walther Collection are a true
representation of the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of photography in this period of
diversification.
CONSERVATION SCIENCE
The conservation objectives were manifold: to determine the manner of the photographs’
construction—the material constituents of both the image and its paper— and to test a
new methodology, previously applied only to smaller sets of pictures. To this end the
conservation team gathered literature, magazines, advertisements, and broadsides of the
period—tracking the appearance and history of once familiar products and techniques, so
many now given up to history—and launched into a suite of technical analyses for each
photograph in the collection. Chris McGlinchey, the Museum’s Sally and Michael Gordon
Conservation Scientist, who had pioneered the use of handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF)
devices on photographs in 2001, set to work, and Ana Martins, Associate Conservation
Scientist, statistically evaluated the immense data sets that the research had produced.
Surface texture, a special line of investigation for Paul Messier, independent conservator,
and Jim Coddington, the Museum’s Chief Conservator, drew on a body of research in
imaging systems built up by, among others, the Cultural Heritage Imaging group in San
Francisco, using techniques of polynomial mapping and reflectance transformation
imaging. Messier’s modifications of these methods enabled the study, documentation,
and sharing of the surfaces of photographs by the same artists in other museum
collections. The success of documenting photographs from different collections with
these kinds of reproducible results not only raised the bar for standards of collaboration
but made possible future comparisons that adhere to these published methods and
procedures. MoMA was thus positioned not only to synthesize and mine the largest body
of raw data on a group of photographs ever gathered, but to extend that effort beyond its
own walls.
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/the_project.html#intro
You may visit a comprehensive web page that prepare for the exhibition of Modern
Photographs From the Thomas Walther Collection at Moma to read all the essays, artist’s
information and to see all the photographs with there knowledge to click below special
link.
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/#home
Photography is particularly well suited to capturing the distinctive nuances of the human
face, and photographers delighted in and pushed the boundaries of portraiture
throughout the 20th century. The Thomas Walther Collection features a great number of
portraits of artists and self-portraits as varied as the individuals portrayed. Additionally,
the collection conveys a free-spirited sense of community and daily life, highlighted here
with photographs made by André Kertész and by students and faculty at the Bauhaus.
When the Hungarian-born Kertész moved to Paris in 1925, he couldn’t afford to purchase
photographic paper, so he would print on less expensive postcard stock. These prints,
whose small scale requires that the viewer engage with them intimately, function as
miniature windows into the lives of Kertész’s bohemian circle of friends. The group of
photographs made at the Bauhaus in the mid-1920s, before the medium was formally
integrated into the school’s curriculum, similarly expresses friendships and everyday life
captured and printed
in an informal manner. Portraits by Claude Cahun (French, 1894 - 1954), Lotte Jacobi
(American, born Germany, 1896 - 1990), Lucia Moholy (British, born Czechoslovakia, 1894
- 1989), Man Ray (American, 1890 - 1976), August Sander (German, 1876 - 1964) and
Edward Steichen (American, born Luxembourg, 1879 - 1973) are among the highlights of
this gallery.
ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )
MONDRIAN'S GLASSES AND PIPE 1926
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1926–c. 1928
Dimensions Image: 7.9 × 9.3 cm - Sheet: 8.5 × 13.6 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Grace M. Mayer Fund
© Estate of André Kertész
GEORG MUCHE ( GERMAN 1895 – 1987 )
REFLECTION: THE WEAVING WORKSHOP IN THE BALL 1921
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1921–25
Dimensions Image: 15.9 × 11.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
EL LISSITZKY ( RUSSIAN 1890 – 1941 )
SELF-PORTRAIT - 1924
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1924
Dimensions Image: 13.9 × 8.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by exchange
© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
GERMAINE KRULL ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1897 – 1985 )
JEAN COCTEAU 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 22.3 × 16.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
GUSTAV KLUTSIS ( LATVIAN 1895 – 1938 )
UNTITLED 1926
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 8.9 × 6.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
IWAO YAMAWAKI ( JAPANESE 1898 – 1987 )
UNTITLED 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 22 x 16.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
WALTER A. PETERHANS ( AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1897 – 1960 )
ANDOR WEININGER, BERLIN 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1955–86
Dimensions Image: 21.7 × 15.6 cm - Sheet: 22.5 × 16.4 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Estate Walter Peterhans, Museum Folkwang, Essen
GERTRUD ARNDT ( GERMAN 1903 – 2000 )
AT THE MASTERS’ HOUSES 1929 - 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
LORE FEININGER ( GERMAN 1901 – 1991 )
ERICH SALOMON 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )
LÉGER STUDIO - 1927
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1927 - 1929
Dimensions Image: 10.3 × 7.9 cm - Sheet: 10.5 × 8.1 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Estate of André Kertész
ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )
GÉZA BLATTNER 1925
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1925–35
Dimensions Image: 7.7 × 8.2 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Estate of André Kertész
5- BETWEEN SURREALISM & MAGIC REALISM
In the mid-1920s, European artistic movements ranging from Surrealism to New
Objectivity moved away from a realist approach by highlighting the strange in the familiar
or trying to reconcile dreams and reality. Echoes of these concerns, centered on the
human figure, can be found in this gallery. Some photographers used anti-naturalistic
methods—capturing hyperreal, close-up details; playing with scale; and rendering the
body as landscape—to challenge the viewer’s perception. Others, in line with Sigmund
Freud’s definition of “the uncanny” as an effect that results from the blurring of
distinctions between the real and the fantastic, offered visual plays on life and the lifeless,
the animate and the inanimate, confronting the human body with surrogates in the form
of dolls, mannequins, and masks. Photographers influenced by Surrealism, such as
Maurice Tabard, subjected the human figure to distortions and transformations by
experimenting with photographic techniques either while capturing the image or while
developing it in the darkroom. Additional photographers on view include Aenne Biermann
(German, 1898 - 1933), Jacques-André Boiffard (French, 1902 - 1961), Max Burchartz
(German, 1887 - 1961), Helmar Lerski (Swiss, 1871 - 1956), and Stanisław Ignacy
Witkiewicz (Polish, 1885 - 1939).
ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )
DISTORTION #126 - 1933
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1933 - 1939
Dimensions Image: 20.3 × 34 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© Estate of André Kertész
HERBERT BAYER ( AMERICAN, BORN AUSTRIA 1900 - 1985)
HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE 1932
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 38.9 × 29.3 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Acquired Through the Generosity of Howard Stein
MAX BURCHARTZ ( GERMAN 1887 – 1961 )
EYE 1928
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 30.2 x 40 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Acquired Through the Generosity of Peter Norton
MAURICE TABARD ( FRENCH 1897 – 1984 )
SOLARIZED FILM 1936
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1936 - 1955
Dimensions Image: 24.1 x 12 cm - Mount: 24 × 18 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Robert Shapazian, by Exchange
MAURICE TABARD ( FRENCH 1897 – 1984 )
UNTITLED 1928
( HAND ON WALL WITH SHADOW )
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 17.7 x 22.9 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
RAOUL HAUSMANN
UNTITLED - FEBRUARY 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1931-1933
Dimensions Image: 13.7 × 11.3 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© 2014 Raoul Hausmann/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
RAOUL HAUSMANN
UNTITLED - FEBRUARY 1931
DESCRIPTION
As a key member of the Berlin-based Dadaists, between 1918 and 1922 Raoul Hausmann
exhibited assemblage sculptures, collages, and photomontages made with magazines and
newspaper clippings. Being a Dadaist, he dissociated himself from photography—
considered a positivist medium—in a 1921 unpublished manifesto titled “Wir sind nicht
die Photographen” (We are not the photographers), but by the late twenties he had taken
up photography in earnest, making straightforward images of landscapes and plants
before turning to more experimental works on light and optics.
Hausmann made this untitled image in February 1931, during his intensive years of
experimental photography and prior to his departure from Berlin in 1933. The model is his
second wife, Hedwig Mankiewitz-Hausmann, who is pictured in other of his photographs
from early that year. This print is among Hausmann’s more modest small formats from
the early 1930s. He enlarged the image onto double weight paper with a semireflective
surface and later trimmed the print; Hausmann printed on a range of paper types but
favored German Agfa-Brovira papers. On the verso, the presence of adhesive residues
along the top and a faint dark spot at the top center, possibly due to adhesive residue,
indicates that this print was previously attached to a support, perhaps as part of a
photomontage or other presentation.
Hausmann took at least two other images of this model and mirror, most likely at the
same time. He used one in an untitled photomontage exhibited in Fotomontage,a show
organized by his friend César Domela-Nieuwenhuis and mounted in April–May 1931 at the
Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in Berlin. Hausmann published this image in the Cologne-based
review A bis Z, in May 1931. In 1946 he included another version in two other
photomontages: L’Acteur (now in the collection of Institut Valencià d’Art Modern) and an
untitled work in which he kept only a part of the enlarged eye. In all the images, the
reflection in the shaving mirror magnifies the organ of vision, the eye, in line with many
avant-garde photographic works of that period. The round mirror becomes a metaphor
for the camera’s mechanical lens, which enables the operator to see the world literally
larger than life. In another untitled work (MoMA 1689.2001), Hausmann used a lens
instead of a mirror to achieve a similar magnification.
—Quentin Bajac, Hanako Murata
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/83999.html
JOHAN NIEGEMAN (DUTCH 1902 – 1977 )
UNTITLED 1926 - 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 7.5 × 10.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
UMBO ( OTTO UMBEHR ) ( GERMAN 1902 – 1980 )
WARRIORLIKE FACE 1926 - 1927
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1926–27
Dimensions Image: 17.3 × 12.2 cm - Sheet: 17.7 × 12.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© 2014 Umbo/Gallery Kicken Berlin/Phyllis Umbehr/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
HARRY LACHMAN ( AMERICAN 1886 – 1975 )
UNTITLED STILL FROM THE MAGICIAN ( 1926 ) 1925
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 22.7 x 28.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
6- DYNAMICS OF THE CITY
In his 1928 manifesto “The Paths of Contemporary Photography,” Aleksandr Rodchenko
advocated for a new photographic vocabulary that would be more in step with the pace
of modern urban life and the changes in perception it implied. Rodchenko was not alone
in this quest: most of the avant-garde photographers of the 1920s and 1930s were city
dwellers, striving to translate the novel and shocking experience of everyday life into
photographic images. Equipped with newly invented handheld cameras, they used
unusual vantage points and took photos as they moved, struggling to re-create the
constant flux of images that confronted the pedestrian. Reflections in windows and
vitrines, blurry images of quick motions, double exposures, and fragmentary views portray
the visual cacophony of the metropolis. The work of Berenice Abbott (American, 1898 -
1991), Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882 - 1966), Germanie Krull (Dutch, born
Germany, 1897 - 1985), Alexander Hackenschmied (Czech, 1907 - 2004), Umbo (German,
1902 - 1980), and
Imre Kinszki (Hungarian, 1901 - 1945) is featured in this final gallery.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1496
ANDRE KERTESZ ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY 1894 – 1985 )
GRANDS BOULEVARDS 1926
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1926 - 1935
Dimensions Image: 7.8 x 10.9 cm - Sheet: 8.4 × 12.9 cm
ANTON BRUEHL ( AMERICAN, BORN AUSTRALIA 1900 – 1982 )
UNTITLED 1929
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1929–55
Dimensions Image: 25.3 × 20.2 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© 2014 Anton Bruehl Estate
CHARLES SHEELER( AMERICAN 1883 – 1965 )
FORD PLANT, RIVER ROUGE, BLAST FURNACE AND DUST CATCHER 1927
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1927 - 1944
Dimensions Image: 24.1 × 19.2 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B.
Menschel and gift of Lincoln Kirstein, by Exchange
© 2014 The Lane Collection
CESAR DOMELA – NIEUWENHUIS ( DUTCH 1900 – 1992 )
HAMBURG, GERMANY'S GATEWAY TO THE WORLD 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1930–32
Dimensions Image: 40.3 × 41.9 cm - Mount: 48.5 × 49.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection funds, by exchange
© 2014 César Domela/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
WALKER EVANS ( AMERICAN 1903 – 1975 )
VOTIVE CANDLES, NEW YORK CITY 1929 - 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 21.6 x 17.7 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Willard Van
Dyke and Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., by Exchange
FLORENCE HENRI ( SWISS, BORN AMERICA 1893 – 1982 )
UNTITLED 1928 - 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 9.1 × 12 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Eulabee Dix, by Exchange
J. JAY HIRZ ( AMERICAN )
BROOKLYN BRIDGE IN RAINY WEATHER 1927
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 24.2 × 19.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
LEE MILLER ( AMERICAN 1907 – 1977 )
UNTITLED 1929 - 1932
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1929–39
Dimensions Image: 21.3 × 24.8 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. The Family of Man Fund
© 2014 Lee Miller Archives, England
MARJORIE CONTENT ( AMERICAN 1895 – 1984 )
STEAMSHIP PIPES, PARIS
Winter 1931
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1931–65
Dimensions Image: 9.7 × 6.8 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Andreas Feininger, by exchange
© Estate of Marjorie Content
JAROSLAV ROSSLER ( CZECH 1902 – 1990 )
UNTITLED 1924
Gelatin Silver Print With Pencil and Black Ink
Dimensions Image: 24.1 x 22.8 cm
Medium Gelatin Silver Print With Pencil and Black Ink
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Robert B. Menschel Fund, by exchange
© 2014 Sylva Vitove-Rösslerova
UMBO ( OTTO UMBEHR ) ( GERMAN 1902 – 1980 )
MYSTERY OF THE STREET 1928
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1928- 1932
Dimensions Image: 29 x 23.5 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange
© 2014 Sylva Vitove-Rösslerova
UMBO ( OTTO UMBEHR ) ( GERMAN 1902 – 1980 )
MYSTERY OF THE STREET 1928
DESCRIPTION
Trained at the Bauhaus under Johannes Itten, a master of expressivity, Berlin-based
photographer Umbo (born Otto Umbehr) believed that intuition was the source of
creativity. To this belief, he added Constructivist structural strategies absorbed from Theo
Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, and others in Berlin in the early twenties. Their influence is
evident in this picture’s diagonal, abstract construction and its spatial disorientation. It is
also classic Umbo, encapsulating his intuitive vision of the world as a resource of poetic,
often funny, ironic, or dark bulletins from the social unconscious.
After he left the Bauhaus, Umbo worked as assistant to Walther Ruttmann on his film
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1926. In 1928, photographing from his window either
very early or very late in the day and either waiting for his “actors” to achieve a balanced
composition or, perhaps, positioning them as a movie director would, Umbo exposed
three negatives. He had an old 5 by 7 inch (12.7 by 17.8 centimeter) stand camera and a 9
by 12 centimeter (3 9/16 by 4 ¾ inch) Deckrullo Contessa-Nettle camera, but which he
used for these overhead views is not known, as he lost all his prints and most negatives in
the 1943 bombing of Berlin. The resulting images present a world in which the shadows
take the active role. Umbo made the insubstantial rule the corporeal and the dark
dominate the light through a simple but inspired inversion: he mounted the pictures
upside down (note the signature in ink in the lower right).
In 1928–29, Umbo was a founding photographer at Dephot (Deutscher Photodienst), a
seminal photography agency in Berlin dedicated to creating socially relevant and visually
fascinating photoessays, an idea originated by Erich Solomon. Simon Guttmann, who
directed the business, hired creative nonconformists, foremost among them the
bohemian Umbo, who slept in the darkroom; Umbo in turn drew the brothers Lore
Feininger and Lyonel Feininger to the agency, which soon also boasted Robert Capa and
Felix H. Man. Dephot hired Dott, the best printer in Berlin, and it was he who made the
large exhibition prints, such as this one, ordered by New York gallerist Julien Levy when he
visited the agency in 1931. Umbo showed thirty-nine works, perhaps also printed by Dott,
in the 1929 exhibition Film und Foto, and he put Guttmann in touch with the Berlin
organizer of the show; accordingly, Dephot was the source for some images in the
accompanying book, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here comes the new photographer!).
Levy introduced Umbo’s photographs to New York in Surréalisme (January 1932) and
showcased them again at the Julien Levy Gallery, together with images by Herbert Bayer,
Jacques-André Boiffard, Roger Parry, and Maurice Tabard, in his 1932 exhibition Modern
European Photography.
—Maria Morris Hambourg, Hanako Murata
http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/83932.html
RAOUL HAUSMANN ( GERMAN, BORN AUSTRIA 1886 – 1971 )
UNTITLED C. 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1960 - 70
Dimensions Image: 18.2 × 22.6 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B.
© 2014 Raoul Hausmann/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
PAUL CITROEN ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1896 – 1983 )
METROPOLIS 1923
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 20.3 × 15.3 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
© 2014 Paul Citroen/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/Pictoright, Amsterdam
IMRE KINSZKI ( HUNGARIAN 1901 – 1945 )
UNTITLED C. 1930
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 8.5 x 11.6 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Thomas Walther
ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO ( RUSSIAN 1891 – 1956 )
DEMONSTRATION 1932
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 29.6 × 22.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by Exchange
FRED KORTH (AMERICAN, BORN GERMANY 1902 – 1983 )
UNTITLED C. 1928
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 5.5 × 7.8 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of Robert and Joyce Menschel, by Exchange
DZIGA VERTOV ( RUSSIAN, 1895 – 1954 )
UNTITLED 1927 - 1928
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1927 - 1932
Dimensions Image: 13.4 × 8.9 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
LASZLO MOHOLY - NAGY ( AMERICAN, BORN HUNGARY. 1895 – 1946 )
BERLIN, RADIO TOWER 1928
Gelatin Silver Print
Print Date 1928–36
Dimensions Image: 38.1 × 27.8 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
SASHA STONE ( AMERICAN, BORN RUSSIA 1895 – 1940 )
THE EINSTEIN TOWER IN POTSDAM (THE COELOSTAT IN THE UPPER DOME
THAT CATCHES AND PROJECTS THE LIGHT OF THE STARS INTO THE LABORATORY) 1928
Gelatin Silver Print - Print Date 1928 - 1935
Dimensions Image: 23.1 × 17.4 cm
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection.
Abbott-Levy Collection Funds, by Exchange
GERMAINE KRULL ( DUTCH, BORN GERMANY 1897–1985)
UNTITLED 1926 - 1928
Gelatin Silver Print
Dimensions: 16.9 x 22.9 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thomas Walther Collection.
Gift of David H. McAlpin, by Exchange
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909 - 1949
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
December 13, 2014 - April 19, 2015