A while ago when writing about the Karl Blossfeld exhibition I mentioned that I would be coming back to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy but it is only now that I have been able to get round to doing so.

I just wanted to add a brief note about a remarkable book that was published last year on the photography of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Until this came out I did not know much about his photographic work. I knew of him primarily as making sculptures. I knew about his photograms and his work at the original Bauhaus in Weimar, and indeed have a copy (only in pdf format alas) of his Malerei, Photographie, Film (1925). What I had not realised was how extensive his what I might describe as more conventional photographic work was. This new book brings a significant amount of that work together (roughy 350 individual images). With the predominance of portraits and pictures taken while travelling, not least when he moved to London and then America, this has the feeling of a family album, though one that contains also quite a lot of interesting architectural photography.

These are though “family snaps” that are distinctly modernist and show considerable innovation in composition, lighting, angles and points of view, for example. It is also interesting to see him working in a typological way, particularly with many of the photos of non-family, which at face value at least have something in common with August Sander’s work.

As a personal aside I was intrigued to find towards the end of the book some pictures from 1936 taken in Port Erin on the Isle of Man showing buildings that I recognise from repeated childhood summer holidays that I spent there. So little had the place changed over thirty or forty years!

Unfortunately, apart from a brief introduction in English by his daughter, Hattula, the rest of the text, mostly descriptions of and commentaries on the photos, is only in German. Fortunately I can still read German fairly well so am not troubled by this but anyone without knowledge of the language might be put off. I would though say that the range and quality of the pictures makes the book worthwhile despite this.

Fiedler, J, (2018). Moholy Album. Göttingen: Steidl

Moholy-Nagy, L, (1925).  Malerei, Photographie, Film. Munich: Albert Langen

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