Page 44 - Studio International - July August 1975

Strzeminski
Unistic Composition 8 1931132
Oil on canvas, 6o x 36 cm.
Coll : Museum Sztuki, Lodz
In his facture studies Moholy tended
to play down the editorial role of the eye
behind the viewfinder: the surface is
uniform and continuous. However, the
structure of Moholy's photographic
compositions usually derives from his
perception of the dynamic function of the
framing rectangle. The edge of the image
is what animates his forms (far more
forcibly than is the case with his
painting). However arbitrary and
startling they may have seemed in the
'twenties, it would now be difficult to
look at his photographs without
invoking well-worn aesthetic criteria — Dolls 1926
but Moholy must be credited for his Reproduction: Bauhaus Archive, Berlin
part in setting up these criteria in place
of those he was originally trying to expose
as 'reproductive'. Some of his
photographs have been reproduced in
varying orientations; none is
necessarily wrong, since Moholy
regarded a print as something to explore
further rather than as a finished
statement of data seen and captured on
film. In his juxtaposition of a positive and
a negative print of a woman's body (or
rather, a partial view of her lying on a
bed, seen from above), Moholy has
actually signed the print upside down.
The signature (unusual on the front of
his photographs) presumably serves to
confirm the orientation which most
effectively disturbs an uncritical
naturalistic reading of the space. He was
fascinated by how much a print could
reveal that the eye might have missed,
and is reported to have irritated Edward
Weston (a photographer with a rather
tighter approach to image making) by
turning Weston's photographs upside
down and pointing out hidden forms".
Moholy's own photographs are, of
course, highly composed; but seldom to
the extent of manifestly setting up the
subject before exposure, as Weston
sometimes did. Moholy was more likely Nude Positive, Nude Negative 1931
to go to some trouble in finding himself Two photographs, each 39 x 26 cm.
a near-impossible viewpoint than to allow George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

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