Sarah Hermanson Meister

An epic dive into modernist photography by the museum that helped shape its historyThe history of photography has been told many times, but never before through the incomparable collection of photographs at The Museum of Modern Art. As the second volume in a set of three books that together present a new and comprehensive history of photography through works from MoMA's collection, this publication charts the medium during the height of the modernist period, from 1920 to 1960. Only one other volume--Looking at Photographs, published in 1973--highlights the photographic treasures of MoMA's collection; neither Beaumont Newhall's classic History of Photography nor John Szarkowski's Photography Until Now used the Museum collection as a springboard to approach photography's distinctive history. The Museum's significant role in the development of this history, and in the construction of a canon that championed photography as an art form (but also eclipsed certain alternative or unfamiliar practices) requires a reconsidered history for the 21st century. This publication offers a fresh critical lens through which to appreciate works of exceptional significance, surprise and influence, encouraging creative new readings. The book begins with an in-depth introduction followed by eight chapters of full-color plates, each introduced by a short essay. Masterworks by photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray and Aleksander Rodchenko appear alongside lesser-known gems, and diverse notions of modernism enrich classic interpretations, so that the beautiful fictions and messy realities of photography are complicated, refreshed and, above all, enjoyed.

Published to accompany the first museum exhibition in the United States of the work of German-born Grete Stern and Argentinean Horacio Coppola, From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires explores the individual accomplishments and parallel developments of two of the foremost practitioners of avantgarde photography in Europe and Latin America. The book traces their artistic development from the early 1930s, when the two met in Berlin at the Bauhaus, through the mid-1950s, by which time they had firmly established the foundations of modern photography in Buenos Aires. While twentieth-century photography has a fair number of important teams, Stern and Coppola are unique in that they managed to share their avant-garde ambition while maintaining their autographic styles and individual practices. The couple effectively imported the lessons of the Bauhaus to Latin America, and revolutionized the practice of art and commercial photography on both sides of the Atlantic by introducing such innovative techniques as photomontage, embodied in Stern’s protofeminist works for the women’s journal Idilio, and through Coppola’s experimental films and groundbreaking images for the photographic survey Buenos Aires 1936. Featuring a selection of newly translated original texts by Stern and Coppola, and essays by curators Roxana Marcoci and Sarah Meister and scholar Jodi Roberts, From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires is the first publication in English to examine the critical intersections that defined the notable careers of these two influential artists.

Photography at MoMA: 1840 to 1920 is the final volume in a set of three books that together present a new and comprehensive history of photography through works in The Museum of Modern Art's collection. Illustrated with over 400 reproductions, the book charts the photographic medium from early examples in the 1840s through its participation in international art movements such as Pictorialism and modernism. An in-depth introduction is followed by eight chapters of full-color plates, each introduced by a short essay, offering a fresh lens through which to appreciate works of exceptional significance, surprise and influence, and encouraging creative new readings. Masterworks by photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Nadar, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Henry Fox Talbot, August Sander, Edward Steichen and Carleton Watkins appear alongside lesser-known gems and vernacular forms of photography.

Bill Brandt was the preeminent British photographer of the twentieth century, a founding father of photography's modernist tradition whose half-century-long career defies neat categorization. This publication presents the photographer's entire oeuvre, with special emphasis on his investigation of English life in the 1930s and his innovative late nudes. The Museum of Modern Art has been exhibiting and collecting Brandt's photographs since the late 1940s, and has recently more than doubled its collection of vintage prints of his work, which forms the core of this selection. An essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator in the Department of Photography at MoMA, sets the artist's life and work in the context of twentieth-century photographic history. With rich duotone illustrations that highlight the special characteristics of Brandt's prints, this volume is an invaluable resource to students and scholars alike. Lee Ann Daffner, the Museum's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Conservator of Photographs, contributes an illustrated glossary of Brandt's retouching techniques, enhancing the appreciation of Brandt's printing processes. The book also includes a generously illustrated appendix of Brandt's published photo-stories during the Second World War. Bill Brandt (1904-1983) moved to London from Germany in 1934 and quickly began his investigation of British society, resulting in what would become his signature publications: The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). He continued to photograph in London throughout World War II, contributing regularly to Picture Post and Harper's Bazaar. His postwar career expanded to include portraits and landscapes, and the celebrated series of nudes that remain his crowning achievement. His other major books include Camera in London (1948), Literary Britain (1951) and Perspective of Nudes (1961). Brandt died in London in 1983.

The US was in the midst of the Depression when Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) began documenting its impact through depictions of unemployed men on the streets of San Francisco. Her success won the attention of Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration), and in 1935 she started photographing the rural poor under its auspices. One day in Nipomo, California, Lange recalled, she "saw and approached a] hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet." The woman's name was Florence Owens Thompson, and the result of their encounter was seven exposures, including Migrant Mother. Curator Sarah Meister's essay provides a fresh context for this iconic work.

In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it. --John Szarkowski In 1967, The Museum of Modern Art presented New Documents, a landmark exhibition organized by John Szarkowski that brought together a selection of works by three photographers whose individual achievements signaled the artistic potential for the medium in the 1960s and beyond: Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Though largely unknown at the time, these three photographers are now universally acknowledged as artists of singular talent within the history of photography. The exhibition articulated a profound shift in the landscape of 20th-century photography, and interest in the exhibition has only continued to expand. Yet, until now, there has been no publication that captures its content. Published in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the exhibition, Arbus Friedlander Winogrand features full-page reproductions of the 94 photographs included in the exhibition, along with Szarkowski's original wall text, press release, installation views and an abundance of archival material. Essays by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister and critic Max Kozloff, who originally reviewed the exhibition for The Nation in 1967, critically situate the exhibition and its reception, and examine its lasting influence on the field of photography.

Josef Albers is widely recognized as a crucial figure in 20th-century art, both as an independent practitioner and as a teacher at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University. Albers made paintings, drawings and prints and designed furniture and typography. Arguably the least familiar aspect of his extraordinary career was his inventive engagement with photography, only widely known after his death, including his production of approximately 70 photocollages that feature photographs he made at the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1932. These works anticipate concerns that he would pursue throughout his career--the effects of adjacency, the exploration of color through white, black and gray, and the delicate balance between handcraft and mechanical production. Albers' photographs were first shown at MoMA in a modest exhibition in 1988, when the Museum acquired two photocollages. In 2015 the Museum acquired ten additional photocollages, making its collection the most substantial anywhere outside the Albers Foundation. This publication reproduces each of the photocollages Albers made at the Bauhaus, presenting the scope of this achievement for the first time. An introductory essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister situates them within the contexts of modernist photography, the Bauhaus ethos and of Albers' own practice.