Elsa Thiemann Faschingsmasken oder 3 durchgeschnittene Zwiebeln 1930er Jahre

The ''Neues Sehen'', also known as New Vision or ''Neue Optik'', was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

. ''Neues Sehen'' considered photography to be an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting, through which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. This way of seeing was based on the use of unexpected framings, the search for contrast in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc. The movement was contemporary with

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...

with which it shared a defence of photography as a specific medium of artistic expression, although ''Neues Sehen'' favoured experimentation and the use of technical means in photographic expression.

History

The

inter-war years In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

saw a significant change in the field of photography. On one hand, there was a reaction against the painterly approach; while on the other, there was a renewed interest in the new forms of artistic expression. The three main currents developed during that period are ''Neues Sehen'',

and straight photography. All of them favoured specificity in the photographic medium and its separation from painting. They stood against the photographic associations that were striving to preserve painterly models, accusing them of being unsubstantial, of having a narrow outlook limited to their own assumptions, and of producing images that were unattractive and removed from reality. But ''Neues Sehen'' was also criticised by the defenders of straight photography and New Objectivity for being too experimental, inconsistent, and producing amateur photography of poor technical standards. To defend themselves against the latter, they created classes of pure photography at the Bauhaus school and evolved toward ever-greater objectivity in photography. The movement was formed mainly by young Russian Constructivists such as Alexander Rodchenko and the Bauhaus teachers

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by Constructivism (art), con ...

and Walter Peterhans. Bauhaus students highly influenced by the ''Neues Sehen'' included Elsa Thiemann, Ivana Tomljenović-Meller, Iwao Yamawaki, Erich Consemüller and Andreas Feininger. Moholy-Nagy's wife,

Lucia Moholy Lucia Moholy (née Schulz; 18 January 1894 — 17 May 1989) was a photographer and publications editor. Her photos documented the architecture and products of the Bauhaus, and introduced their ideas to a post-World War II audience. However, Mohol ...

, was also a noted ''Neues Sehen'' photographer. Their stylistic resources included unexpected angles, experimenting with light and shadows to produce large dark areas in the photograph, the use of

photomontage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final imag ...

and

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

, and photographic composition according to the strict principles of perception of the Bauhaus. Creativity was more developed in the subject matter and in the new way of interpreting the photographic image. The works are usually didactic since they force the viewer to confront images that are not easily recognisable as elements of reality. Consequently, these are works of uneven quality and experimental nature.

Film und Foto

The exhibition FIFO, organised in 1929 by the

Deutscher Werkbund The Deutscher Werkbund (; ) is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The ''Werkbund'' became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, parti ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, is considered the first great exhibition of modern European and American photography.Honnef, Klaus (author), Sachsse, Rolf (ed.), Thomas, Karin (ed.) (1997) ''German Photography 1870–1970: Power of a Medium''. Cologne:Dumont Buchverlag It was seen as a showcase for the artistic ideas of the New Vision. Shortly before the opening, in the autumn of 1928, László Moholy-Nagy and

Sigfried Giedion Sigfried Giedion (also spelled Siegfried Giedion; 14 April 1888, Prague – 10 April 1968, Zürich) was a Bohemian-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture. His ideas and books, '' Space, Time and Architecture'', and ''Mechanization ...

, who were in charge of the main room in the exhibition, introduced a change in the initial programme and turned it into a representation of the New Vision. The exhibition included 1,200 works by 191 artists belonging to the fields of cinema, painting, photography and the visual arts in general, and can be considered the culmination of experimental production realised with these media. In Germany it was seen as a retrospective of these fields before the rigid aesthetics of the Nazi regime were imposed. The selection of works was made by several well known figures including Moholy-Nagy, who was one of the selectors for European photography, and

Edward Weston Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was an American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course ...

, who was in charge of the American section. Artists included

Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science ...

, Willi Baumeister,

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

, Hein Gorny,

Hannah Höch Hannah Höch (; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar Republic, Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collag ...

, Eugène Atget,

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

, Alexander Rodchenko,

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...

Imogen Cunningham Imogen Cunningham (; April 12, 1883 – June 23, 1976) was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nude photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its ...

Charles Sheeler Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionism, Precisionist paintings, commercial photographer, commercial photography, and the 1921 avant-garde film, ''Manhatta'', which he made in collaboratio ...

and Brett Weston, among others. The selected works were characterised by unexpected angles, such as the photographs taken by Willi Ruge from a parachute, the use of photomontage, etc. After seeing the exhibition, the critic Franz Roh wrote an essay entitled ''Foto-Auge'' (Photo-eye), asserting that photography had changed in a definitive manner.Roh, Franz, ''Foto-Auge'' (parallel titles=Oeil et photo = Photo-eye). London:Thames and Hudson. (1974 facsimile, in German, English and French, of the original published in 1929 by Akademischer Verlag). In the same year, the exhibition travelled to Zurich, Berlin, Danzig and Vienna, and in 1931 it was presented in Tokyo and Osaka.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neues Sehen Photography in Germany History of photography Bauhaus

History

Film und Foto

Further reading

References