Max Ernst - Histoire Naturelle

"Histoire Naturelle" by Max Ernst consist of of a portfolio with thirty-four collotypes after frottage that he made in 1925. Like the nature prints this works are assembled from physical surfaces that he printed in the of him invented frottage technique to construct his own, surreal images. 

You can see more of the prints here.

dora maar and hello or goodbye

big thanks to laurel for letting me post all these images by artists that were filling my brain it was a ton of fun. images are about my favorite things in the world and almost ever since I started making them i dreamt of a time when we could speak in pure images - maybe we are getting closer ... like the egyptians !

i started posting with john coplans a week ago and the last or the first post will be someone just as special ..... everybody's favorite picasso muse henriette theodora markovitch aka dora maar was also a photographer and an unparalleled image maker in her own right. more dora can be found here __ _thanks and keep in touch ___ BestBiLLS

[ per ubu 1936 : sans titre 1935 : sans titre 1934 ]

raoul ubac

raoul ubac was a belgian painter, sculptor and photographer whose work proceeded and paralleled that of frederick sommer. more here

raoul hausmann

"At the time he was living with Heda Mankowicz-Hausmann and Vera Broido in Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße in Charlottenberg. Elfrided Hausmann-Scheffer, Til and I went there often. But I always found it very boring. He was just acting the photographer, and the lover of Vera B, showing off terribly with what he could afford to buy now - the ésprit was all gone." Hannah Höch more here

erwin blumenfeld

nobody made more beautiful or interesting images than the incomparable Erwin Blumenfeld who began as a painter moved through dada and surrealism and into fashion. more here and here

[ Le miroir brisé 1940 . the Dictator 1937 , Four Faces of Manina Paris 1938 , Oty Reijne-Lebeau, Amsterdam 1932]

erik niedling

german photographer erik niedling's most recent project, formation, is a re-printing of a found archive of thousands of glass negatives made between the two world wars. the photos depict plants, blossoms, tools and the everyday life of garden production in the sober visual language of new objectivity photographrs like albert renger-patzsch and karl blossfeldt. see more here.

[all erik niedling. 2007. top to bottom: formation #5. formation #26. formation #27.]

history lesson • lászló moholy-nagy

lászló moholy-nagy was born in hungary in 1895, in the 1920s he moved to germany and eventually became a teacher at the bauhaus. in the 1930s he landed in chicago and was instrumental in the spread of photographic education in the united states. he began his experiments with photography in the form of photograms in the 1920s. looking at these works today i am blown away at how interesting and relevant they still look and feel. i love his graphical approach to picture making and the spirit of experimentation in these. see more of lászló's work here.

[all lászló moholy-nagy. top to bottom: photogram no. 1 - the mirror. ca. 1928. © estate of lászló moholy-nagy. via the getty. superimposition. ca. 1935. in the collection of the george eastman house. study with pins and ribbons. 1937-8. in the collection of the george eastman house. jealousy. 1927. in the collection of the george eastman house.]

masao horino

okay today we have a little history lesson in japanese modernist photography. masao horino was considered one of the most prominent photographers in the first half of the 20th century in japan. he was particularly interested in putting forth the beauty of machinery and photographed tons of bridges, tanks, towers, and ships. i love the combination of image and text here. you can learn more about him on wikipedia right here.

[masao horino. the character of greater tokyo. 1926-31.]