Elizabeth Siegel – författare

One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in 20th-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students, including Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. To date, however, the ID's enormous contributions to the art and practice of photography have gone largely unexplored. "Taken by Design" is the first publication to examine thoroughly this remarkable institution and its lasting impact. With nearly 300 illustrations, inlcuding many never-before-published photographs, "Taken by Design" examines how the ID change the nature of photography over this critical period in America's midcentury. It starts by documenting the experimental nature of Moholy's Bauhaus approach and photography's new and enhanced role in training the "complete designer". Next it traces the formal and abstract camera experiments under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, which aimed at achieving a new kind of photographic subjectivity.Finally, it highlights the ID's focus on conscious references to the processes of the photographic medium itself. In addition to photographs by Moholy, Callahan and Siskind, the book showcases works by Barbara Crane, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Joseph Jachna, Kenneth Josephson, Gyorgy Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Ray K. Metzker, Richard Nickel, Arthur Siegel, Art Sinsabaugh, and many others. Also included are major esays from experts in the field, biographies, a chronology and reprints of critical essays, making "Taken by Design" a valuable work for anyone interested in the history of American photography.

A riveting retrospective of the imaginative photographs created by contemporary artist Abelardo MorellOver the past twenty-five years, Abelardo Morell (b. 1948) has earned international praise for his images that use the language of photography to explore visual surprise and wonder. Born in Havana, Cuba, Morell came to the United States as a teenager in 1962 and later studied photography, earning an MFA from Yale University. He gained attention for intimate, black-and-white pictures of domestic objects from a child’s point of view, inspired by the birth of his son in 1986, as well as images in which he turns a room into a giant camera obscura, projecting exterior views onto interior spaces; and photographs of books that revel in their sensory materiality.In more recent years, he has turned to color, exploring the camera obscura with a painterly delight and innovating a tent camera that projects outdoor scenes onto a textured ground. Across his career, Morell has approached photography with remarkable wit and creativity, examining everyday objects with childlike curiosity. The first in-depth treatment in fifteen years, this handsome and important book examines Morell’s career to the present day, including his earlier works in black-and-white and never before published color photographs from the past decade. An essay by Elizabeth Siegel, along with a recent interview with the artist and an illustrated chronology of his life and works, offers a riveting portrait of this contemporary photographer and his ongoing artistic endeavors.Distributed for the Art Institute of ChicagoExhibition Schedule:The Art Institute of Chicago(06/01/13–09/02/13)The J. Paul Getty Museum(10/01/13–01/05/14)High Museum of Art(02/22/14–05/18/14)

The first comprehensive study of these rare, influential objects, documenting a formative moment in the noted photographer’s early careerThis elegant book unites all of the known carte postale prints by the photographer André Kertész (1894–1985), including portraits, views of Paris, careful studio scenes, and exquisitely simple still lifes. Essays shed new light on the artist’s most acclaimed images; themes of materiality, exile, and communication; his illustrious and bohemian social circle; and the changing identity of art photography. Playful yet refined, the book’s design reflects the spirit of 1920s Paris while underscoring the modernity of the catalogue’s more than 250 illustrated works. Kertész made his rigorously composed prints on inexpensive but lush postcard stock, sharing them with friends and sending them back to family in Hungary. The works reveal the artist learning his craft as he encountered an international group of modernists—including Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, and Joseph Csáky—in the interwar metropolis. Prized by collectors as well as by Kertész himself, the cartes postales influenced his compositions and the intimate scale of his picture making for decades.Distributed for the Art Institute of ChicagoExhibition Schedule:Art Institute of Chicago(October 2, 2021–January 17, 2022)High Museum of Art, Atlanta(February 18–May 29, 2022)