Mein Kodak Avant-Garde Photography in 1920s Germany

This study examines some of the fundamental principles of a number of influential photographers working in Germany in the 1920s and assesses the ways they understood the world through their camera's lens. German photography initiated a complex engagement with the modern world and marked a significant reevaluation of the relationship between the camera, perception and reality. The unique quality of the photographic image's verisimilitude of nature was an important phenomenon in this re-evaluation, as it led to assumptions about the capacity of photography to reveal the truth of reality. László Moholy-Nagy's innovative employment of a variety of photographic techniques provide an effective conduit to modern theories about photography that not only expose the presumptions surrounding the photographic image, but also the inherent complications. I propose that the avant-garde photographic experiments of 1920s Germany radically changed the ways in which humanity perceived and interacted with the surrounding world