On Photography: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

This is the first in an ongoing series of posts called ‘On Photography’. Each post will be an extract from the writings of a photographer or critic. This extract is by the Hungarian photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

In photography we possess an extraordinary instrument for reproduction. But photography is much more than that. Today it is a fair way to bringing (optically) something entirely new into the world. The specific elements of photography can be isolated from their attendant complications, not only theoretically, but tangibly, and in their manifest reality.

The eight varieties of photographic vision

1.  Abstract seeing by means of direct records of forms produced by light: the photogram which captures the most delicate gradations of light values, both chiaroscuro and coloured.

2.  Exact seeing by means of the normal fixation of the appearance of things: reportage.

3.  Rapid seeing by means of the fixation of movements in the shortest possible time: snapshots.

4.  Slow seeing by means of the fixation of movements spread over a period of time: e.g., the luminous tracks made by the headlights of motor cars passing along a road at night: prolonged time exposures.

5.  Intensified seeing by means of:

a) micro-photography;

b) filter photography, which,by variation of the chemical composition of the sensitized surface, permits photographic potentialitiesto be augmented in various ways - ranging from the revelation of far-distant landscapes veiled in haze orfog to exposures in complete darkness: infra-red photography.

6.  Penetrative seeing by means of X-rays: radiography.

7.  Simultaneous seeing by means of transparent superimpositions: the future process of automatic photomontage.

8.  Distorting seeing: optical jokes that can be automatically produced by:

a) exposure through a lens fitted with prisms, and the device of reflecting mirrors; or

b) mechanical and chemical manipulation of the negative after exposure.

Extract from: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, ‘A New Instrument of Vision’ (1936)

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), a Hungarian painter and photographer, was a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry in the arts. While a Professor at the Bauhaus School, he experimented with the photographic process of exposing light sensitive paper with objects overlaid on top of it, called the photogram. Moholy-Nagy taught a diverse range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, photomontage and metal.

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