Die Transformierung

Photoplastic. The Transformation/Anxiety Dream, 1925, Breuer’s figure is repeated, but altered by the addition of a ball and upside-down eyes from other faces (one pair belonging to the silent film star Mae Murray). Pencil lines around the figures indicate cropping for this print, in which the three Breuers are enlarged and the white space around them is eliminated. The disturbing eyes in this version perhaps gave rise to the ambiguous alternate title Anxiety Dream. Ultimately, Moholy-Nagy adapted the series to advertise the Schocken Department Store in Nuremberg. The legacy of Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy is among the most cherished in the lineage of photographic art, and he can be defined as a visionary whose radical experiments with photography entirely re-imagined the possibilities for the medium. Working in the early 20th century when photography was not considered a form of high art, Moholy-Nagy actively sought to break down boundaries and find new languages of photographic discourse. In doing so, he left behind an oeuvre of visual ideas that have provided artistic license to a century’s worth of photographers to experiment boldly beyond the conventional definitions of what photography is expected to be. Edition: 1 of 1