Man and Technique: Photography as the Art of Modernity in Franz Roh and László Moholy-Nagy’s Thought

Abstract

A great turning point took place in ’20s and ’30s of the Twentieth Century for the definitive awareness of the expressive and heuristic potential of photography: it becomes, indeed, together with Cinema, the art of reference for its technical – and hence very modern – nature. The greatest interest of photographers and theorists of photography focuses then on those experimental images that are really “photographic”: images that are the result of a mature and correct usage of the photographic media, showing in addition the new look imposed by it on reality. Contemporary to Walter Benjamin’s theories on photography and the work of art technically reproduced, László Moholy-Nagy and Franz Roh’s theories are developed: they make clear how photography is the most appropriate media for the full understanding and the consequent mis en forme of modernity, since its technical nature guarantees its performance; moreover thanks to an experimental and innovative usage it can open up to new visions of the real, hence imposing a new perspective on things.