Stephen Daiter [foreword]: LIGHT AND VISION: PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE SCHOOL OF DESIGN IN CHICAGO, 1937-1952. Chicago: Stephen Daiter Photography Gallery, 1994. First edition [edition of 1500 copies]. Quarto. Photo illustrated wrappers. 68 pp. 50 black and white images. Exhibition Catalog. Wrappers lightly rubbed, otherwise a nearly fine copy.
8.5 x 10.25 perfect-bound softcover catalogue with 68 pages and many beautifully-reproduced black and white images by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gyorgy Kepes, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and many others. Foreword by Stephen Daiter. Catalog Checklist, Chronology, Biographical Sketches and Bibliography.
Published on the occasion of several landmark exhibitions: "Light and Vision" at the Chicago Photographic Print Fair from September 23 to 25, 1994; at The Chicago Cultural Center and "Moholy-Nagy and His Students: The New Bauhaus" at the Robert Henry Fine Arts Gallery from September 9 through October 12, 1994. A landmark exhibition, it precedes by many years the book-length study called "ID: Institute of Design" that was published by the Art Institute of Chicago. A pioneering work of lasting significance. This title was not commercially distributed and is now very difficult to find.
The photographers include Henry Holmes Smith, Gyorgy Kepes, László Moholy-Nagy Arthur Siegel, Margaret de Patta, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Marvin Newman and Yasuhiro Ishimoto, among many others.
Presents the works that emanated from the Chicago institutions known as the New Bauhaus, The School of Design and the Institute of Design, which offered the most important and influential photography programs in the United States from the 1930's through the 1960's. No other photography school or program since then has matched let alone surpassed the achievement of the schools and their enduring influence. The works of some of the very greatest names in 20th-century American photography are all represented here and the photographs shown in the exhibitions were all vintage prints while the photograms were all unique.
In 1937 former Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy accepted the invitation of a group of Midwest business leaders to set up an Industrial Design school in Chicago. The New Bauhaus opened in the Fall of 1937 financed by the Association of Arts and Industries as a recreation of the Bauhaus curriculum with its workshops and holistic vision in the United States.
Moholy-Nagy drew on several émigrés affiliated with the former Bauhaus to fill the ranks of the faculty, including György Kepes and Marli Ehrman. The school struggled with financial issues and insufficient enrollment and survived only with the aid from grants of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations as well as from donations from numerous Chicago businesses. The New Bauhaus was renamed the Institute of Design in 1944 and the school finally merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1949.
In Chicago Moholy aimed at liberating the creative potential of his students through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms. The focus on natural and human sciences was increased, and photography grew to play a more prominent role at the school in Chicago than it had done in Germany. Training in mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in Germany. Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such as "light, photography, film, publicity", "textile, weaving, fashion", "wood, metal, plastics", "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture". The most important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in photography, under the guidance of teachers such as György Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegel or Harry Callahan.
Moholy-Nagy served as Director of the New Bauhaus in its various permutations until his death in 1946.
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