60 FOTOS
60 PHOTOS
60 PHOTOGRAPHIES [Fototek 1]
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jan Tschichold [Designer]
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo: 60 FOTOS. 60 PHOTOS. 60 PHOTOGRAPHIES [Fototek 1]. Berlin: Klinkhart & Biermann, 1930. First edition. Slim octavo. Text in German, English and French. Perfect-bound thick, photographically printed wrappers. Unpaginated [76 pp.]. 60 plates, text and advertisements. Design and typography by Jan Tschichold. Yellow ink faded as usual. Loss to spine ends, light soiling and edgewear. Small former owner stamp on front endpaper. A very good copy.
7 x 10 softcover book: Moholy-Nagy's first photography monograph, with 60 fullpage offset plates of photographs, photomontages and photograms, a seminal work in the New Vision movement edited by Franz Roh. First in a Fototek series in which eight volumes were planned but only two produced.
Photography makes aware for the first time the optical unconscious, just as psychoanalysis discloses the instinctual unconscious.
— Walter Benjamin
Moholy-Nagy foresaw photography as the artform of the future. As the discovery of one-point perspective gave creative impetus to the Renaissance, so Moholy-Nagy realised that technical advances in photography and film would transform social and cultural values as the 20th century progressed. He predicted: "It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future."
One year after organizing the Stuttgart "Film und Foto" international exhibition, the "most important photography exhibition of the 20th century," Laszlo Moholy-Nagy published this 1930s photobook. His New Vision for photography is realized in this volume's picture-essay format, its kinetic design and modernist questioning of form, the negative print, where "magical effects lie hidden," and a series of playful photomontages and photograms -- luminous images 'like weird spheres of light . . . that seem to penetrate space. —Parr & Badger, p. 86.
From the Publishers Prospectus: " Moholy was one of the first to leave petrified traditions in photography and tread new paths by extending photographic possibilities both practically and theoretically. He arrived at lasting results in the photogram and in photo-montage at a time when these forms were almost unknown."
The Circle of New Advertising Designers (ring neue werbegestalter) was a group who coalesced after the first statements on the new typography by Tschchold and Moholy-Nagy, and their purpose was the promotion of a common vision of the avant-garde. Ring neue werbegestalter intentionally echoed the name of The Ring, a group of Berlin-based architects which had been formed a few years earlier. The idea came from Kurt Schwitters and was trumpeted in a 1928 issue of Das Kunstblatt: "A group of nine artists active as advertising designers has formed under the presidency of Kurt Schwitters. Baumeister, Burchatz, Dexel, Domela, Michel, Schwitters,Trump, Tschichold and Vordemberge-Gildewart belong to the association."
Before forming The Ring, Schwitters had broadened his approach to visual art to include graphic design, even going through the avant-garde right of passage of designing a sans-serif typeface. The affiliation of The Ring appears to have been somewhat loose, its activities consisting manily of exhibitions, either promoting the group on its own or contributing to larger events, such as the Werkbund's Film und Foto in 1929.
In Heinz and Bodo Rausch's Gefesselter Blick (1930), The Ring's point of view was defined by Paul Shuitema, acknowledging that modern design involved the separation of hand and machine which previous generations had so strongly fought against: "the designer is not a draughtsman, but rather an organizer of optical and technical factors. His work should not be limited to making notes, placing in groups and organizing things technically."
Tschichold was more succinct: "I attempt to reach the maximum of purpose in my publicity works and to connect the single constructive elements harmoniously -- to design."