The possibilities of utilizing photography are already innumerable, since through it the crudest and the finest effects of light values — later on also of color values — can be obtained. Such as:
Registration of situations, of reality;
Combining and projecting upon another and next to each other; Interpenetration; Organizable scenic intensifications; supperreality, utopia and jest (this will be the new joke!)
Objective, but also expressive portraits;
That’s from a 1929 essay, The Future of the Photographic Process, by László Moholy-Nagy. Here is more (that preceded the above):
It is still revolutionary to proclaim a basic enrichment of our optic organ with the aid of changed compositional principles in painting and the film. Most men still cling too much to an evolutionary continuity of the manual-imitative ad analogiam classical pictures, so that they are unable to conceive this complete change.
And from near the end:
… To illustrate the idea of photoplasticism: these photoplastic studies — composed of various photographs — are an experimental method of simultaneous presentation; compressed interpenetration of the visual and the verbal jest; a weird linking with the imaginary of the most real, imitative means. But at the same time they may tell a story, and be of solid quality; more true “then life itself.” This work which today is still done by hand, we will soon be able to produce mechanically with the aid of projections and new methods of copying.
… The present method of cutting-out, arrangement side by side, the fatiguing organization of photographic proofs, shows a superior form in contrast to the early pasting work of the Dadaists. But only through mechanical construction and development along big lines will photography and the film realise the marvelous possibilities for effect which are inherent in them.
-Julie
