Getty Museum

[Cover Design for the Spandau-Haselhorst Housing Development Prospectus]

Date

1929–1930

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Object ID

f05ae65f-eae7-4c5f-a04d-5e16d2d8036d

> This piece was designed as the cover of a prospectus for a large housing development on the outskirts of Berlin. Residents could rent to own their apartments and could have space for a garden. The original montage from which the photograph was made is in the Getty collection ([84.XM.997.89](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/46673/laszlo-moholy-nagy-cover-design-for-spandau-haselhorst-housing-development-prospectus-american-about-1928-1929/)). The Getty also has two other prints of this photograph ([84.XM.997.11](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/46595/laszlo-moholy-nagy-cover-design-for-spandau-haselhorst-housing-development-prospectus-american-about-1928-1929/) and [84.XM.997.39](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/46623/laszlo-moholy-nagy-cover-design-for-spandau-haselhorst-housing-development-prospectus-american-1929-1930/)). > > In this vision of plentitude a smiling man sits on a bench displaying a healthy armload of children, with a crib of docile infants at his right. Behind his left shoulder is a small picture of the latest in working-class housing, the complex of space-efficient homes and flats being advertised. More prominent in this composition—which is significantly more image-packed that most montages by László Moholy-Nagy—are the abundant gardens and elaborate manors, which, although beyond the means of the average worker, were intended to suggest the pleasures of home ownership. In the 1929 essay “Az ember és a háza” (Man and his house) in *Korunk* (Our time), Moholy-Nagy notes the dire shortage of housing in Germany at this time and urges attention to the planning of apartment buildings so that the interior spaces could perform a more stimulating function than simply protecting dwellers from the elements. Walter Gropius was involved in the planning of the housing development and probably commissioned Moholy to design the prospectus cover. > > Adapted from Katherine Ware, *László Moholy-Nagy*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 76. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.

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