Photography as a Medium

Learning from the New Bauhaus

Serial, fragmentary and abstract works were created at the New Bauhaus Chicago. How can the works shown in the exhibition "New Bauhaus Chicago. Experiment in Photography" at the Bauhaus Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin, be conveyed to school pupils and a young audience today? 

Fotografie als Medium der Vermittlung: New Bauhaus Chicago. Erkunden von neuen Techniken.
Anja Edelmann

Part 2

Often, it seems as if the main thing was not the "perfect photographic print", but the experiment and a "development". Students at the New Bauhaus were given concrete, tightly defined tasks to train their vision and expand their photographic skills.What could be more obvious in outreach work than to take up the methods and content used at the New Bauhaus and transfer them into a contemporary context? Harry Callahan, a pioneer of modern photography and one of the photography lecturers at the New Bauhaus, said in retrospect that "there could be no better way to communicate photography". 

Fotografie als Medium der Vermittlung: New Bauhaus Chicago. Erkunden von neuen Techniken.
Anja Edelmann

Berliner partner schools
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Artistic supervision
Henriette Abitz / Designer
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November 2017 and March 2018
Anja Edelmann / Bauhaus Agent

Learning to communicate

Creative seeing and design were taught at the New Bauhaus, and photography served as a medium. This makes some of the photos in the exhibition difficult to read for the uninitiated observer. The challenge to communication thus lies in the fact that its methods and exercises must correspond to the modern visitors' abilities and today's technical possibilities. For this reason, the project first introduced art teachers from Berlin's partner schools to experimental work at the New Bauhaus, before pupils then began to approach the topic of virtual volume, for example, under the guidance of their teachers.

(AE 2017)

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