László Moholy-Nagy

titled in pencil and with the photographer's 'foto moholy-nagy' stamp on the reverse, framed, Edwynn Houk Gallery and Guillermo de Osma Galería labels on the reverse, 1929

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

European Private Collection

Madrid, Guillermo de Osma Galería, Germaine Krull : métal y la fotografía industrial 1920-30, June - July 2011

New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, May - September 2016

This print:

Germaine Krull : métal y la fotografía industrial 1920-30 (Madrid, 2011), pl. 24 

Matthew S. Witkovsky, Carol S. Eliel, and Karole P. B. Vail, eds., Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2016), pl. 349

This early photograph, trimmed to the image and on double-weight paper with a nearly matte surface, is in generally excellent condition. It has a rich, slightly warm-green tonality. There are two deposits of original retouching in 1/8-inch areas along the area of the bridge. In high raking light, faint silvering is visible in the darkest areas. There is some minor edge chipping. The right corner is creased and bumped. The reverse is appropriately age-darkened. There is minimal soiling and a few graphite marks. There are tape and glue remains at the edges, suggesting this photograph was previously affixed to a mount. The photographer's stamp is in purple ink and the title in pencil remains robust.
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Pont Transbordeur im Regen, Marseille, is one of a number of photographs made by Moholy-Nagy in 1929 in the Mediterranean port city.  The previous year, the art historian Sigfried Giedion, a close friend of Moholy-Nagy, published Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton, illustrating Marseille’s transporter bridge on the dust-jacket.  The bridge, built nearly a quarter century before, became an icon of modernity and attracted not only Moholy-Nagy, but also photographers Florence Henri, Germaine Krull, and Man Ray.  Herbert Bayer, Moholy-Nagy former's student, showed eight photographs of the bridge in the 1929 Film und Foto (Fifo) exhibition in Stuttgart.

As in his 1928 bird’s-eye views from Berlin’s radio tower, Moholy-Nagy’s use of vantage point to redefine and abstract pictorial space is no less inventive from the ground, as in the present photograph.  The social conditions of Marseille’s harbor were also of interest to Moholy-Nagy, and were the basis of his first short movie Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen (Impressions of the Old Marseille Harbor).