Moholy-Nagy, Climbing the Mast
About this video
Two curators look at László Moholy-Nagy's photograph Climbing the Mast (1928), a classic example of his New Vision worm's-eye view. They discuss how the unexpected oblique angle, strong geometry and rhythm of textures make us look harder, and why Moholy-Nagy believed photography was the new language of the masses. They contrast his subtly political approach with artists like Rodchenko who used overtly political subjects.
You'll be able to
- explain what a worm's-eye view is and how it affects the viewer.
- describe how geometry, texture and light create dynamism in the photograph.
- explain what Moholy-Nagy meant by photo-literacy.
- explain why his work was political but not overtly so.
Key words
- worm's-eye view
- A view looking straight up at a subject from below.
- bird's-eye view
- A view looking down at a subject from high above.
- oblique angle
- A tilted, unexpected camera angle rather than a straight-on view.
- gelatin silver print
- A common black-and-white photographic print made with light-sensitive silver.
- photo-literacy
- Moholy-Nagy's idea that people must learn to read images, or they will be the new illiterate.
Transcript
(soft piano music) Female 1: We're in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we're lookin at Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's, Climbing the Mast from 1928. It's a gelatin silver print, and it's pretty amazing. Female 2: It is amazing and shows one of the things that he was known for with his new vision photography over the use worm's-eye and bird's-eye views.
This is a classic way to see what he meant by worm's-eye view. This unexpected angle that you get of the climber on the mast. It's kind of jarring and makes you stop in your tracks because it's not the kind of positioning that you would normal expect with a straight photograph.
Female 1: He's taken the worm's-eye view very literally and ends up ending our expectation. Female 2: He was always hoping that by giving us these unexpected or what was often called oblique angles that would lead us to think deeply about what were looking at. You have a figure, a human figure. I actually can't tell if it's male or female. Can you?
Female 1: Not really. I mean, it's just not important. Female 2: It's just an athletic body climbing up to rig up a sail boat, and you get this also interesting shadow of the rope ladder and the figure reflected on the sail that's been rigged. You see it from directly underneath these almost disembodied looking legs and the bottoms of the feet staring at you right in the face.
Female 1: It's a totally shortened figure, and it takes a moment and you finally see this head peeking through the legs kind of looking at him making eye contact. Female 2: Then you have the wonderful wooden mast of the ship slicing through the center of the composition. You can also see that he has great eye for compositional elements.
Female 1: I think there's really a strong sense of geometry as well. Everything is divided into sections. If you wanted to you could take apart the entire thing and kind of piece it back together. There's also a rhythm he sets up visually between textures, between light and dark, between shadows, between fabric and wood, and especially the legs, which are really smooth, and the smoothness of the wood that travels all the way up. Everything is just sort of lifting us up into this.
Female 2: It creates the dynamism of motion and movement swooping you into the composition. We became very convinced that photography was going to be the new language of the masses. He actually started to refer to things like photo-literacy, that if you didn't know how to read images you were going to be the new illiterate.
Female 1: Photography was a definite weapon for them in terms of communication, in terms of revolutionary messages, in terms of art. Here it's Moholy playing with perspective, and playing with perception, and playing with our vision, and really forcing us to look at things from a different point of view.
Female 2: Yes, absolutely. With Moholy a lot of times, the subject matter, it's rarely overtly political. For the most part for him it was more about expanding the perception of the viewers that would allow them to engage with those new modern language. It was for the masses. It was political but not overtly so.
Some like [Rachanko] would use these oblique jarring angles, but he would almost always have subject matter that was also political, demonstrations, you know, Little Pioneer Girl, with Moholy it was more this general formulation still very modern life materiel. Especially, the athleticism of the figure, a real symbol of modernity that he's injected that aspect of modern life.
Female 1: A temporary figure that we're looking at. Female 2: Yes, inarguable contemporary. (soft piano music)
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