Getty Museum

Bühnenszene Lautsprecher

Date

1924

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Object ID

b14b88ec-70b4-4313-934f-270f54e098cc

> László Moholy-Nagy was enthusiastic about the creative potential of the phonograph and predicted that it would supersede all other musical instruments. He wrote several articles on the subject and used the loudspeaker image to illustrate his essay in *Die Bühne im Bauhaus (*The Theater of the Bauhaus*).* As early as 1922 he suggested that a composer could create his work directly on a disc, incising it with graphic patterns, without having to rely on traditional musical notations or the skill of performers. Instead of simply reproducing familiar sounds, the phonograph would create sound. Similarly, Moholy felt that the camera should be liberated from its role of recording the natural world in order to create abstract pictures of light and form. The suspended mechanical elements pictures here are not intended for practical application but are Moholy’s shorthand for communicating energy and his excitement about the possibilities of the phonograph. Katherine Ware, *László Moholy-Nagy*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 18. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.

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