“Institute Of Design of Illinois Institute Of Technology”
Institute of Design
Institute of Design: “Institute Of Design of Illinois Institute Of Technology.” Chicago, IL: Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, n. d [circa 1946 from the 632 N. Dearborn Street address]. Single fold brochure printed to recto only and machine folded for mailing [as issued]. Illustrated with a striking black and white halftone by Chano. Tabbed sticker to verso as issued. Creased and worn, but a good copy of a rare survivor.
8.5 x 11-inch single fold promotion for the Institute Of Design of Illinois Institute Of Technology, listing the fields of study as the Foundation Course, Product Design, Shelter Design & Building Research, Visual Design, Photography, and Art Education.
‘If you enjoy working with tools as well as people and ideas, if you are interested in working with an intensely vital student body in a mature environment, write or call for the new catalogue.”
One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in twentieth-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students, including László Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, and Aaron Siskind.
In 1937 László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), a Hungarian Jew fleeing Nazi Germany, was brought to Chicago by the city's industrial leaders to establish a school of industrial design to be modeled after the original Bauhaus in Germany, the pioneering school of art, design and architecture where Moholy had taught previously. Although the New Bauhaus lasted only one year (1937-1938), it was quickly reorganized as the School of Design (1939-1944) and eventually became the Institute of Design (1944-present).
The photographs produced in the ID's early years were controlled studio experiments, more concerned with form and materials than with imitating works by photography's masters or documenting the world. Moholy's photograms, for example, are elegant light studies that reveal the complete scale of gray between black and white and illustrate photography's abstract potential.
Along similar lines, faculty member György Kepes (1906-2001) produced an extensive series of photographs of his wife in which he explored solarization and negative exposure and even painting on the picture's surface. Nathan Lerner (1913-1997), a student and later teacher at the ID, worked with refractive lenses and photomontage and used his light box to test the pictorial effects of pure light. Another student, Milton Halberstadt (1919-2000), produced a triple -exposed portrait to showcase photography's capacity for simultaneous vision. At a moment when American photography was largely confined to more conventional portraiture, landscape or documentary reportage, these experimental and abstract pictures revealed the enormous creative potential of the medium.
As the school grew, Moholy hired Arthur Siegel (1913-1978) and Harry Callahan (1912-1999) to lead a new, four-year program in photography. After Siegel resigned, Callahan hired Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), and the two formed a superbly effective teaching team that is now legendary. Under their leadership, the program's emphasis shifted from experimentation toward the development of individual vision and subjective expression.