Victoria Olsen

I've been wanting to post an abstract photograph for awhile, but haven't found one that inspired me.  This one, by Laslo Moholy-Nagy, is actually a photogram (1926).  Moholy-Nagy placed his hand and the paintbrush on light-sensitive paper and exposed it directly in the sun, without a camera or negative.  This image is unique in several senses: it is not reproducible and it documents the individual hand of the artist.  Clearly, Moholy-Nagy is making a claim here about photography's status as an art form.  It can do abstract, he insists.  It can do unique, collectible objects.  It can compete with the paintbrush and it creates by hand.  Apart from the argument, though, it is also simply beautiful.  The overlapping shapes work together as form, too.  The layering of hands makes them both looks ghostly.  They are outlined by light that shone long ago on hands no longer living.  The silhouetted fingers on the paintbrush glow on the page.  The shadow hand is crisscrossed by a grid of lines in contrasting shading.  X's mark the fingertips, where identity is revealed in an individual print.  The whole grouping fans out to fill the paper and insists on its own presence.  One can imagine a hand pushing down on that paper and holding, holding, holding, while the sun made the idea into art.