New vision – Wikipedia

Carnival masks, or three trenched onions , Par Elsa Thiemann (in) , 1930s.

New Vision , also known as See something new , New Vision or New optics , was a movement, not specifically limited to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly linked to the principles of the Bauhaus. Neues Sehen considered photography as an autonomous artistic practice with its own composition and lighting laws, by which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye to look at the world. This new way of seeing is based on the use of unexpected framing, the search for contrasts in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc. ^{[ first ]} . The movement is contemporary with the new objectivity with which he shares a defense of photography as a specific means of artistic expression, although Neues Sehen favors experimentation and the use of technical means in photographic expression.

The years of the interwar period have seen an important change in the field of photography. On the one hand, there was a reaction against the pictorial approach; On the other hand, there has been a renewed interest in new forms of artistic expression. The three main currents developed during this period are the neues Sehen, new objectivity and direct photography. All have favored the specificity of the photographic medium and its separation from painting. They opposed the photographic associations which tried to preserve the pictorial models, accusing them of being without substance, of having a narrow vision limited to their own hypotheses and of producing images unattractive and far from reality.

But Neues Sehen was also criticized by defenders of direct photography and new objectivity to be too experimental, incoherent, and to produce photographs of lovers of low technical level. To defend themselves against the latter, they created pure photography classes at the Bauhaus school and have evolved towards an ever greater objectivity in photography.

The movement was mainly formed by young Russian constructivists such as Alexander Rodchenko and the teachers of the Bauhaus László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Peterhans. Among the students of the Bauhaus very influenced by the Sehen neues, we find Elsa Thiemann (in) , Ivana Tomljenović-Meller, iwao Yamawaki, Erich Consmüller (in) And Andreas Feininger. The wife of Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, was also a renowned Sehen photographer. Their stylistic resources included unexpected angles, the experimentation of light and shadows to produce large dark areas in photography, the use of photomontage and collage, and photographic composition according to the strict principles of perception of the Bauhaus ^{[ 2 ]} . Creativity was more developed in the subject and in the new way of interpreting the photographic image.

The works are generally didactic because they force the spectator to confront images which are not easily recognizable as elements of reality. Therefore, these are works of unequal quality and of experimental nature.

The FIFO exhibition, organized in 1929 by Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart, is considered the first major European and American modern and American photography exhibition ^{[ 3 ]} . It was considered a showcase of the artistic ideas of the new vision. Shortly before the opening, in the fall of 1928, László Moholy-Nagy and Sigfried Giedion, who were responsible for the main hall of the exhibition, introduced a change in the initial program and transformed it into a representation of the New Vision ^{[ 4 ]} .

The exhibition included 1,200 works from 191 artists belonging to the fields of cinema, painting, photography and visual arts in general, and can be considered as the culmination of an experimental production carried out with these media. In Germany, it was considered a retrospective of these areas before the rigid aesthetic of the Nazi regime was imposed ^{[ 3 ]} .

The selection of works was made by several personalities including Moholy-Nagy, who was one of the selectors of European photography, and Edward Weston, who was responsible for the American section. Among the artists were Germaine Krull, Berenice Abbott, Willi Baumeister, Marcel Duchamp, Hein Gorny, Hannah Höch, Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Alexander Rodchenko, Edward Steichen, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Sheeler and Brett Weston, among others. The selected works were characterized by unexpected angles, such as the photographs taken by Willi Ruge from a parachute ^{[ 5 ]} , the use of photomontage, etc. After seeing the exhibition, the critic Franz Roh wrote an essay entitled Foto-Auge (Photo-Eeil), saying that photography had changed definitively ^{[ 6 ]} . The same year, the exhibition was presented in Zurich, Berlin, Dantzig and Vienne. In 1931, she was presented in Tokyo and Osaka.

The appearance on the market of handy devices, such as Leica and Rolleiflex, gives photographers a new freedom.

Abandoning frontal and horizontal shooting (the point of view located about 1.20 m from the ground) inherited from the previous century, they can adopt unpublished angles (diving, counter-angled, lateral vision), structuring and Framing the cliché by dynamic diagonals and close -up framing.

Photographers located in the current of the New Vision [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Non -exhaustive list

• Christian Bouqueret, The women photographers of the new vision in France, 1920-1940 , Paris, Marval, 1998
• Balsells, David (2010) Prague, Paris, Barcelona: Photographic modernity from 1918 to 1948 . The factory. Mnac (ISBN  978-84-8043-219-1 )
• Ingelmann, Inka Graeve (2014). Mechanics and Expression: Franz Roh and the New Vision—A Historical Sketch in Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909–1949. An Online Project of The Museum of Modern Art . New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.
• The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars . Metropolitan Museum of Art: Distributed by HN Abrams, (ISBN  9780870995507 ) .
• Moholy-Nagy, László; Hoffmann, Daphne M. (Translator) (2005) The new vision: fundamentals of Bauhaus design, painting, sculpture, and architecture . Dover, (ISBN  9780486436937 ) .
• Photo eye . Thames and Hudson, (ISBN  978-0500540176 ) .
• Essays, autobiographical notes, letters, memories . Publisher of Art, (ISBN  9783364002736 ) .
• Paths of contemporary photography . In: Wolfgang Kemp (ed.), Theory of Photography II 1912-1945 (in German). Schirmer / Mosel. (ISBN  9783888140419 ) .