Yesterday, I went to the “Bauhaus und die Fotographie” exhibit at Museum für Fotografie in Berlin. This show is a reminder that Bauhaus, the German art school which existed from 1919 to 1933, not only was a remarkable influence on its own time, but also continues to widely influence art and design.

The show, which presents both work from the original 1929 “Film und Foto” (FiFo) exhibit curated by Bauhuas instructor László Moholy-Nagy, and current work by students from Hochschule Darmstadt and the Technische Hochschule Nürnberg. The new work in the show springboards from Bauhaus design principles and is true to the innovative spirit that was the core of Bauhaus.

The 1929 FiFo exhibit, which traveled to Zurich, Berlin, Gdansk, Vienna, Agram, Munich, Tokyo, and Osaka, was dedicated to showing the history of photography, as well as predicting the future of this relatively new medium. The exhibit featured 1200 pieces by 200 artists.

By utilizing every-day objects and contemporary scenes as content for art photography, the ground-breaking 1929 show asserted that “beauty” had no boundaries, and that daily life also was worthy of art-status. I couldn’t agree more!

Today, the influence of Bauhaus is so much a part of our living environment that we don’t even think of it. Much of the furniture, advertising, set design, applied arts, and utilitarian objects that we see or touch every day seem “modern,” but actually were conceived in the 1920’s and 30’s at Bauhaus. Case in point: the uncluttered and functional design of the iPhone!

The exhibit will run through August 25, 2019

note: I tried to minimize reflections on the pictures I took of this exhibit, but was not able to avoid them entirely. I hope you can ignore them, and enjoy this sampling of pieces that are in the show!