FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945
Matthew S. Witkovsky

In the 1920s and 1930s, photography became an immense phenomenon across Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Poland. Through magazines and books, in advertisements and at exhibitions, from amateur clubs to avant-garde schools, photographs emerged as a key vehicle of modern consciousness. This book presents the work of approximately one hundred individuals whose creations exemplify the potential of photography in Central Europe between the two world wars. Foto brings together for the first time works by recognized masters such as the Russian El Lissitzky, the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, and the German Hannah Höch—all of whom developed their photographic ideas in Germany—with contemporaries such as Karel Teige and Jaromír Funke (Czechoslovakia), Kazimierz Podsadecki (Poland), Károly Escher (Hungary), and Trude Fleischmann (Austria), who are less familiar today. Organized thematically, the book explores topics from photomontage and war to gender identity, modern living, and the spread of surrealism.

Fully illustrated, 312 pages. Produced by the National Gallery of Art and published in association with Thames & Hudson. Softcover $45; hardcover $60.

Modernity and Tradition — Film in Interwar Central Europe, Brochure

In conjunction with the exhibition Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918 – 1945, a series of documentary, feature, and experimental films produced in central Europe between the world wars is being shown at the National Gallery. Both popular and rarely seen films in six thematic programs explore the cinematic developments within the region, in the context of the advent of modernity. (Download the brochure PDF 445K)

Exhibition Brochure

The story of photography’s phenomenal success in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Austria during a time of tremendous social and political upheaval is presented in the first survey ever done on this subject. Drawn from several dozen American and international collections, the exhibition is unprecedented in its scope with approximately 150 photographs, books, and illustrated magazines that explore such topics as photomontage and war, gender identity, life and leisure in the modern metropolis, and the spread of surrealism. (Download the brochure PDF 1.1MB)