Nathan Lerner
American, 1913-1997
Light Drawings with Folded Paper
1940
gelatin silver print
18 ½ x 12 in
PH.124
"Nathan Lerner was an influential graphic designer, photographer and educator who helped transmit Bauhaus ideas in the United States during the 1940s...Consistent with the teaching and philosophy of Moholy-Nagy, Lerner's mature photographs were experimental in nature and probed the structural characteristics of light and dark. In order to study these properties of the medium more thoroughly, Lerner developed new photographic instruments and techniques. He is credited with developing the light box, a tool for studying the tonal and directional behavior of light still in use in art schools today, and Moholy-Nagy considered him the inventor of "montage without scissors," a process of distorting images by combining dissimilar objects." Lisa Hostetler
Handy et al. Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection, New York: Bulfinch Press in association with the International Center of Photography, 1999, p. 220.
Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin, Germany
Biblioteque National, Paris
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Kyoto Museum of Fine Art, Kyoto,
La Biblioteque Nationale, Paris
Le Centre Pompidou Paris, France
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Pentax Museum, Tokyo
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago