"OBJECT: PHOTO. MODERN PHOTOGRAPHS - THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION 1909-1949" par Mitra ABBASPOUR, Lee Ann DAFFNER & Maria MORRIS HAMBOURG. Editions The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2014. Imprimé en Espagne. Fort in-4, couverture toilée vert clair sous jaquette photo. 400 pages. Texte en anglais, illustré de 615 reproductions photographiques, noir & blanc et couleurs, in-texte et hors texte, dont 106 planches parmi les 341 travaux des 148 éminents photographes constituant cette collection. Ouvrage réalisé dans le cadre de l'exposition éponyme au MoMA, New York, du 13 Décembre 2014 au 19 Avril 2015.

 

"The period between the first and second world wars saw a dynamic explosion of photographic vision on both sides of the Atlantic. Imaginative leaps fused with technological ones, such as the introduction of small, fast, easily portable cameras, to generate many novel ways of taking and making images. These developments - which constitute a key moment in modern art, and are the foundation of today's photo-based world - are dramatically captured in the 341 photographs in the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art. Object: Photo explores these brilliant images using a new approach: instead of concentrating on their content it also considers them as objects, as actual, physical things created by individuals using specific techniques at particular places and times, each work with its own unique history. Essays by both conservators and historians provide new insight into the material as well as the visual nature of these pictures, while also reflecting on the cultural importance of photography in the interwar period and the present rarity of its best examples. Works by 148 photographers are included, with both unfamiliar treasures and landmark images by Berenice Abbott, Karl Blossfeldt, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Florence Henri, André Kertész, Germaine Krult, El Lissitzky, Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Maurice Tabard, Umbo, and Edward Weston. The group as a whole amply demonstrates the unimagined depth and richness of this formative moment in history. Each image in the Museum's Walther Collection is presented in a special five-color reproduction and accompanied by an unprecedented degree of technical and historical detail, setting a new standard for the study of photography."

 

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