Barnaby Haran | University of Hull (original) (raw)
Related Authors
Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy)
Uploads
Papers by Barnaby Haran
Adjustment Act, which was the first major measure by the new administration to combat rural pover... more Adjustment Act, which was the first major measure by the new administration to combat rural poverty. As an expert of rural affairs, Tugwell had an unromantic view of the farming life. He wrote in 1930 that 'a farm is an area of vicious, ill-tempered soil with a not very good house, inadequate barns, makeshift machinery, happenstance stock, tired, over-worked men and women -and all the pests and bucolic plagues that nature has evolved…a place where ugly, brooding monotony, that haunts by day and night, unseats the mind'.
A juxtaposition of Ralph Steiner's photograph Ohio Railroad (1922) (figure 1) with László Moholy-... more A juxtaposition of Ralph Steiner's photograph Ohio Railroad (1922) (figure 1) with László Moholy-Nagy's 7 A.M. (New Year's Morning) (1930) (figure 2) reveals some striking similarities. It is not known whether Steiner's photograph was amongst his work displayed at the Deutsche Werkbund Film und Foto exhibition, which was held in Stuttgart in 1929 and was co-organized by Moholy-Nagy. Nor would such information concerning primacy yield a concrete understanding. The almost parallel positioning of the cyclists and pedestrians in these images is probably just a freak coincidence of street photography. Yet their formal parity, evident in the diagonal lines of pavement and shadow, as well as the angular aerial viewpoint, is arresting. These analogies must be treated cautiously-the nature of chemical photography presupposes an indexical binding to the referent and the locale is ultimately intractable. The immediate contexts of production were as distinct as the theoretical underpinnings of Steiner's and Moholy-Nagy's photographs. Moholy-Nagy propounded a 'new vision' in photography, where the multifarious, energetic experimentation of the engineer photographer would cut through surfaces to reveal the dynamism of social relations. i Steiner apparently just took photographs, espousing no theoretical position. Whereas Steiner photographed mostly in isolation during the decade when the business of America was business, Moholy-Nagy, alongside his wife and colleague Lucia Moholy, participated in a vibrant avant-garde discourse within the volatile political and economic climate of Weimar Germany. Carol
Adjustment Act, which was the first major measure by the new administration to combat rural pover... more Adjustment Act, which was the first major measure by the new administration to combat rural poverty. As an expert of rural affairs, Tugwell had an unromantic view of the farming life. He wrote in 1930 that 'a farm is an area of vicious, ill-tempered soil with a not very good house, inadequate barns, makeshift machinery, happenstance stock, tired, over-worked men and women -and all the pests and bucolic plagues that nature has evolved…a place where ugly, brooding monotony, that haunts by day and night, unseats the mind'.
A juxtaposition of Ralph Steiner's photograph Ohio Railroad (1922) (figure 1) with László Moholy-... more A juxtaposition of Ralph Steiner's photograph Ohio Railroad (1922) (figure 1) with László Moholy-Nagy's 7 A.M. (New Year's Morning) (1930) (figure 2) reveals some striking similarities. It is not known whether Steiner's photograph was amongst his work displayed at the Deutsche Werkbund Film und Foto exhibition, which was held in Stuttgart in 1929 and was co-organized by Moholy-Nagy. Nor would such information concerning primacy yield a concrete understanding. The almost parallel positioning of the cyclists and pedestrians in these images is probably just a freak coincidence of street photography. Yet their formal parity, evident in the diagonal lines of pavement and shadow, as well as the angular aerial viewpoint, is arresting. These analogies must be treated cautiously-the nature of chemical photography presupposes an indexical binding to the referent and the locale is ultimately intractable. The immediate contexts of production were as distinct as the theoretical underpinnings of Steiner's and Moholy-Nagy's photographs. Moholy-Nagy propounded a 'new vision' in photography, where the multifarious, energetic experimentation of the engineer photographer would cut through surfaces to reveal the dynamism of social relations. i Steiner apparently just took photographs, espousing no theoretical position. Whereas Steiner photographed mostly in isolation during the decade when the business of America was business, Moholy-Nagy, alongside his wife and colleague Lucia Moholy, participated in a vibrant avant-garde discourse within the volatile political and economic climate of Weimar Germany. Carol