Funkturm Berlin (Berlin Radio Tower)

The Art Institute of Chicago.

Gelatin silver print.

Moholy-Nagy made a series of photographs of the Berlin Radio Tower built in 1926. This famous photograph was taken from a “deliberately disorienting point of view”, which makes it look more like a complex interaction of abstract geometric shapes than a city scene. A narrow tower formed of clear diagonals visually intersects the vertical graphic plane, and the interaction of triangles and circles, enhanced by the contrast of light and shadow, is repeated in smaller circles grouped around the grid of its base. The overall effect: the image is strikingly similar to the abstract geometric patterns that Moholy-Nagy and his peer constructivists created at that time. By the exact definition of critic L. Warren, the abstract model “celebrates the technological and industrial formation of modern life”.