Print Viewing at the CCP: One Flowchart for ‘the New Vision’: Photography and Bauhaus
Join with the Center for Creative Photography for a special print viewing.
Photography was an essential feature of radical experimentation at the Bauhaus, a school in Germany that involved the interrelations of architecture, art, design, and education. Though photography was not formally a part of the Bauhaus curriculum until nearly ten years after its founding, cameras were everywhere: around classrooms, in studios, at events, within artistic practices. It is Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy’s arrival in 1923 that amplified innovation in photographic expressions, techniques, and philosophies at the Bauhaus. With photograms and photomontages, with abstractions and solarizations, artists sought to achieve what Moholy-Nagy described as a “new vision”: a modern perspective for a modern world.
In 1933, as National Socialists significantly trimmed funding and imposed political restrictions on cultural production, the Bauhaus closed. A number of faculty and students immigrated from Germany, expanding their modernist ideals and experiments elsewhere. “One Flowchart for ‘The New Vision’: Photography and the Bauhaus,” drawn from the collection at the Center for Creative Photography, follows the Bauhaus’ progressive principles in image making as they moved to North America. This special print viewing reflects on the Bauhaus’ 100 years of influence on photography, arts education, and the modernist spirit.
Werner Zimmermann, untitled, ca.1927, gelatin silver print, 11.2x8.6cm. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Purchase.