Taken by Design

by Siegel, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780226811673
• ISBN10: 0226811670
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in twentieth-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students, including Laacute;zloacute; Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, and Aaron Siskind. To date, however, the ID's enormous contributions to the art and practice of photography have gone largely unexplored.Taken by Designis the first publication to examine thoroughly this remarkable institution and its lasting impact. With nearly 300 illustrations, including many never-before published photographs,Taken by Designexamines the changing nature of photography over this critical period in America's midcentury. It starts by documenting the experimental nature of Moholy's Bauhaus approach and photography's new and enhanced role in training the "complete designer." Next it traces the formal and abstract camera experiments under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, which aimed at achieving a new kind of photographic subjectivity. Finally, it highlights the ID's focus on conscious references to the processes of the photographic medium itself. In addition to photographs by Moholy, Callahan, and Siskind, the book showcases works by Barbara Crane, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Joseph Jachna, Kenneth Josephson, Gyorgy Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Ray K. Metzker, Richard Nickel, Arthur Siegel, Art Sinsabaugh, and many others. Major essays from experts in the field, biographies, a chronology, and reprints of critical essays are also included, makingTaken by Designan essential work for anyone interested in the history of American photography. Contributors include: Keith Davis, Lloyd Engelbrecht, John Grimes, Nathan Lyons, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Elizabeth Siegel, David Travis, Larry Viskochil, James N. Wood

Author Biography

David Travis is a curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. His books include Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel and All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life.

Elizabeth Siegel is an assistant curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: An Appreciation Hattula Moholy-Nagy

Educating the Eye: Photography and the Founding Generation at the Institute of Design, 1937-46

Plates, 1937-46

"To Open an Individual Way": Photography at the Institute of Design, 1946-61

Plates, 1946-61

Photography on Its Own: The ID in the 1960s

Plates, 1961-71

Big City, Small World: The Photography Scene in Chicago, 1937-71

Vision in Motion: Film and Photography at the Institute of Design

Epilogue: After 1971

Notes

Biographies

Chronology

Catalogue

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Photography Credits

Index

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