Lightplay: Black/White/Gray
László Moholy-Nagy. Lightplay: Black/White/Gray. c. 1926. Gelatin silver print, 14 3/4 x 10 13/16" (37.4 x 27.5 cm). Gift of the photographer. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
László Moholy-Nagy. Lightplay: Black/White/Gray. c. 1926. Gelatin silver print, 14 3/4 x 10 13/16" (37.4 x 27.5 cm). Gift of the photographer. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
In 1927, four years after he joined the faculty of the Bauhaus school in Weimar Germany, Moholy-Nagy published Malerei, Fotografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film). In this influential book—part of a series he coedited with Walter Gropius, director of the Bauhaus—he asserted that photography and cinema had heralded a "culture of light" that had overtaken the most innovative aspects of painting. Moholy-Nagy extolled photography—and film, by extension—as the quintessential medium of the future. His interest in the movement of objects and light through space led him to construct Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space Modulator). This object is the subject of Ein Lichtspiel: schwarz weiss grau (A Lightplay: Black White Gray), Moholy-Nagy's only abstract film, which synthesizes his attempts to visualize the act of seeing from multiple viewpoints.