Anita Douthat, Shapes of Sound, photogram on gold-toned printing-out paper, 1998

 

 

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was more than just a photographer. This Hungarian-born American immigrant was also known for his painting, sculpting, designing, film making and teaching. As an artist who was highly interested in the relationships between light, time, space and mass, it is no wonder that Moholy-Nagy chose to work with the photogram. With this process, Moholy-Nagy actively created and collected what is fleeting: the cast shadow. How appropriate that in an age of intensely growing technology,  that which was previously tentative could be made permanent.

Many of Moholy-Nagy's photograms are formally based. A member of the Bauhaus, he was influenced by the geometric and rational principles that guided this period. An untitled work from 1923-1925 exhibits abstract geometric patterning rather than the shadows of readable objects. For Anita Douthat, such formal qualities are equally important, yet she combines them with representational readings of objects. In her Fire Escape, 1997, the patterned shape of the ladders' cascading rungs may be viewed on an aesthetic level, but the photograms also make a direct reference to the familiar objects employed by Douthat.
 

--Virginia Masters Secor