Photogram

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Gelatin silver print.

This is a work from the series “Photograms”, which the author created by placing objects on photosensitive paper. The object of the image — in this case, the artist’s hand — was placed above the “canvas” to leave white figures. This is essentially a photograph without using a camera. The silhouette of the artist’s hand is crossed by a rectangular grid of long white lines and a superimposed brush-shaped figure. Moholy-Nagy used the formative effects of light throughout his career. In his photograms, this almost obsessive idea is most clear, since light is a means of visual composition or, as the author himself said, “a means of plastic expression”. The art critic L. Dickerman noted that this technique represents a “trace of physical contact”, has a tactile quality and is similar to the “touch of an artist”.