Puppen, Ascona (Dolls, Ascona)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

Gelatin, silver print.

Moholy-Nagy took this photograph while traveling with O. Schlemmer, an artist and his Bauhaus colleague, to Swiss Ascona. This gloomy (which is not typical for the author) image shows two baby dolls lying on a white napkin in a cage on a concrete floor. A grid illuminated by sunlight casts a sharp grid of shadows onto their shapes. One of the dolls with a lively expression turns to the other one, which is lifeless. She does not have one leg, her eyes are closed, and her head is thrown back as if it were a wounded child. In this story, researchers see a biographical orientation – a reflection of the horrors of the war in which Laszlo participated. The aerial perspective and the appeal to the constructivist compositional grid create a sharp contrast to the dramatic play of shadows and straight clean lines. The anthropomorphism of the figures pushes the viewer into the strange world of Surrealism.