Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Quotes

#1. The photographer is a manipulator of light; photography is a manipulation of light.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#2. Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#3. We have - through a hundred years of photography and two decades of film - been enormously enriched ... We may say we see the world with entirely different eyes.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#4. The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#5. Design ... is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#6. It cannot be too plainly stated that it is quite unimportant whether photography produces 'art' or not. Its own basic laws, not the opinions of art critics, will provide the only valid measure of its future worth.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#7. My talent lies in the expression of my life and creative power through light, colour and form. As a painter I can convey the essence of life.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#8. The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#9. In photography we must learn to seek, not the 'picture,' not the aesthetic of tradition, but the ideal instrument of expression, the self-sufficient vehicle for education.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#10. The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light, which embodies the unique nature of the photographic process, is the real key to photography.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#11. A dwelling should be not a retreat from space, but life in space.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#12. When the true qualities of photography are recognized, the process of representation by mechanical means will be brought to a level of perfection never before reached.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#13. In photography we possess an extraordinary instrument for reproduction. But photography is much more than that. Today it is [a method for bringing optically] some thing entirely new into the world.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#14. The photogram, image formation outside the camera is the real key to photography,it embodies the essence ... that allows us to capture light on light sensitive material without the use of any camera.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#15. The invention of photography destroyed the canons of representational, imitative art.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#16. Every period has its own optical focus.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#17. Design is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#18. The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#19. The magic possibility of framing a certain space and time is what brought me to photography. This process of recording elements of 3 dimensions in the flow of time, and fixing them in a 2 dimensional image, creates a new context for the elements of the photograph ...

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#20. The photograph, now they are detached from their original surroundings, they are involved in a close world in which they only relate to each other: all the rest of 'reality' has vanished. This allows us to see those elements from a new point of view and perhaps to reach a better understanding ...

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#21. The organization of light and shadow effects produce a new enrichment of vision.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

#22. The experience of space is not a privilege of the gifted few, but a biological function.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy