BAUHAUS FOTOGRAFIE
Roswitha Fricke [Editor], Egidio Marzona [Designer]
Roswitha Fricke [Editor], Egidio Marzona [Designer]: BAUHAUS FOTOGRAFIE. Dusseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1982. First edition. Text in German. Quarto. Gray cloth stamped in red. Photographically printed dust jacket. 320 pp. 379 black and white photo illustrations. Close inspection reveals a trace of wear overall: a well-preserved example. A nearly fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
"It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future." -- L. Moholy-Nagy
9.25 x 10.75 hardcover book with 320 pages and 379 black and white photographic illustrations [most taken by Bauhaus students & masters] that provide a comprehensive look at the photography of the Bauhaus period. Essays on photography by Walter Peterhans, Moholy-Nagy, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Renger-Patzsch, Kallai, Fritz Kuhr, Willi Baumeister, Adolf Behne, Max Burchartz, Will Grohmann, & Ludwig Kassak. Also includes an exhibition list, example of Bauhaus lesson plan, & a section on photography & typography. "Photography is a Manipulation of Light," is the essay by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
The photographers include Lucia Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Umbo, Lux Feininger, Walter Peterhans, Fritz Kuhr, Werner Siedhoff, Heinz Loew, Herbert Bayer, Hannes Meyer, Joost Schmidt, Erich Consemuller, Willi Baumeister and many others.
These photographs are a unique and exuberant record of Bauhaus activities and experiments during the 1920s and early 1930s. Significantly, most of the photographs were taken by artists-painters like Fritz Kuhr and Werner Siedhoff, designers Heinz Loew and Herbert Bayer, Bauhaus masters Hannes Meyer and Joost Schmidt - who were not self-conscious photographers but who wanted to work with a new technological product.
The results constitute the largest and most comprehensive photographic archive currently available on the Bauhaus, supplementing visual material already published in Hans Wingler's monumental Bauhaus and presenting the school's more human side. Some of these photographs have never been published, while others have not been published since the period in which they were made.
Part I consists of over 100 "artistic" images, a listing of Bauhaus photography exhibits, an example of a Dessau Bauhaus lesson plan, including photography, and essays on various aspects of photography by Peterhans, Moholy, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Ernst Kallai, Fritz Kuhr, Willi Baumeister, Adolf Behne, Max Burchartz, Will Grohmann, and Ludwig Kassack. There is also a section on the use of photography with typography.
Part II is a Bauhaus album - applied photography documenting the Bauhaus buildings, classroom projects, or day-today activities of students and faculty.
Egidio Marzona has assembled the world's foremost collection of works on paper documenting the revolutionary efforts of the Bauhaus. Marzona is also a well-known publisher of books on Russian Constructivism, Futurism, De Stijl, Dadaism, and a host of other movements and figures of the 20th-century avant-garde.