demand for it was high and such popular magazines
asNational Geographicmade a policy of publishing
as much color as it could. By the mid-1930s, and
despite the Depression, the first color transparency
films were released by Agfa and Kodak (1936).
The 1920s and 1930s also experienced the birth of
modern advertising, in the United States and to a more
limited extent in Europe and Japan (Davis 555–580).
Advertising made heavy use of the photographic image,
absorbing much of the creative energies and ideas of the
period. Most major photographers—with perhaps the
exception of Stieglitz—worked at some point in their
careers for commercial publications. The photograph
invaded the entire public sphere, even book covers.
More and more photography books, entirely or par-
tially composed of photographs, were published. They
formed one of the major sources of dissemination of the
work of many practitioners and gave birth to a new
form of art (Davis 172–173, Frizot 570). The 1920s and
1930s were indeed the decades of graphic art, poster,
and book design. Serious photography criticism ensued
(with the publications of articles in specialized maga-
zines and histories of photography), and by the mid-
1930s several important exhibitions had taken place in
Europe and the United States, thus establishing the
photograph as an art among others.
Such evolution spurred the development of an
audience of trained viewers—more and more often
practitioners themselves, albeit within the very lim-
ited sphere of the family snapshot. The public of all
classes became more familiar with as well as more
aware of the power and the potential of the photo-
graph. This expansion of popular practice and of
popular consumption of photography formed the
intellectual, cultural, and economic base for the
development of postwar photography.
JeanKempfSeealso: Agitprop; Bauhaus; Camera: 35 mm;
Dada; Documentary Photography; Farm Security
Administration; Futurism; Group f/64; Institute of
Design; Life Magazine; Modernism; Multiple Expo-
sure and Printing; Museum of Modern Art; National
Geographic; Photogram; Propaganda; Surrealism;
Works Progress AdministrationFurther Reading
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Century American Photography. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Davis, Keith.An American Century of Photography. Kansas
City, MO: Hallmark, 1999.
de Zayas, Marius. ‘‘Photography and Artistic-Photogra-
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de Zayas, Marius. ‘‘Photography.’’Camera WorkJanuary
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Evans, Walker.American Photographs. New York: Mu-
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Moholy-Nagy, La ́szlo ́.Painting, Photography, Film. Cam-
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Philips, Christopher, ed.Photography in the Modern Era: Eur-
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Renger-Patszsch, Albert.Die Welt ist Scho ̈n. Munich: K.
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Strand, Paul. ‘‘Photography and the New God.’’Broom, 1922.HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: INTERWAR YEARS