Modernist Photography reexamines the classic period of twentieth-century photography using new critical approaches to consider five recurrent visual themes during the years 1915 to 1945. These themes cut across such stylistic movements as Pictorialism, Surrealism, and the New Vision, and include the transformation of objects, experimental images of the body, visions of the city, the industrialization of the countryside, and experimental directions in poster design and typography. This thematic approach fosters new perspectives on such key photographers as Bernice Abbott, Brassai, Walker Evans, Raoul Hausmann. Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, and Man Ray and emphasizes the interactions between European and American practitioners. The catalogue will include chapters on each of the five themes by ICP curators Christopher Phillips and Vanessa Rocco. It is based on a selection of seventy works from the Daniel Cowin Collection, a recent donation to the International Center of Photography. This book the first in an ongoing Steidl/ICP series generated from the collections of the ICP archives that will explore in depth the work of an individual artist, movement, or genre in photography.
