The New Typography

woodcut, worshipped as an ideal by book craftsmen, is now obsolete and
can no longer satisfy our demands for clarity and precision.
The special charm of photography lies precisely in its great. often miracu­
lous, clarity and its incorruptibility. As a consequence of the purity of its
appearance and of the mechanical production process, photography is
becoming the obvious means of visual representation in our time. That pho­
tography by itself, even almost accidental photography, is an art, may be
disputed. But does art matter, in every case when photography is used?
Straightforward and often completely inartistic photography is often all we
want from reporters or photographers of objects: because what is wanted
is information in visual form, not art. Where higher requirements exist, a
way to satisfy them will be found. However l1ttle photography at the
moment is an art, it contains the seed of an art which must of necessity be
different from all other art forms.
On the borderline of art is the "posed" photograph. The effects of lighting,
arrangement, and composition can come very near to fine art. A simple
example is the whole-page advertisement in the Paris magazine Vogue
shown opposite. It is remarkable purely as a photograph, but also espe­
cially interesting as an advertisement, since no lettering is used except that
on the objects photographed -yet the result is perfect and successful.
There are two forms in which photography can become art: photomontage
and photogram. By photomontage we understand either an assembly of
separate photos which have been mounted together, or the use of a photo
as one element in conjunction with other pictorial elements (photo­
drawing, photo-sculpture). There are many overlaps between these meth­
ods. In photomontage. with the help of given or selected photographs, a
new pictorial unity is created, which, being deliberate and no longer acci­
dental design, has an axiomatic claim to the title of art. Naturally not all
photomontages are works of art, any more than all oil-paintings. But the
works in this medium of Heartfield (who invented photomontage),
Baumeister, Burchartz, Max Ernst, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Vordemberge­
Gildewart, certainly deserve that title. They are not random assemblies but
logical and harmonious constructed pictures. An ordinary photograph
starts with accidental form (grey tonal values. structural effect. movement
of line) but achieves artistic meaning from the composition of the whole.
What differentiates photomontage from previous art is that the object is
missing. Unlike earlier art it is not a statement about an objective fact but
a work of imagination, a free human creation independent of nature. The
"logic" of such creation is the irrational logic of a work of art. Photo­
montage achieves a really "super-natural" effect through the deliberate