Neues Sehen

The Neues Sehen, also known as New Vision or Neue Optik, was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the Bauhaus. Neues Sehen considered photography to be an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting, through which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. This new way of seeing was based on the use of unexpected framings, the search for contrast in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc. The movement was contemporary with New Objectivity with which it shared a defence of photography as a specific medium of artistic expression, although Neues Sehen favoured experimentation and the use of technical means in photographic expression.

The inter-war years saw a significant change in the field of photography. On the one hand, there was a reaction against the painterly approach; while on the other, there was a renewed interest in the new forms of artistic expression. The three main currents developed during that period are Neues Sehen, New Objectivity and direct photography. All of them favoured specificity in the photographic medium and its separation from painting. They stood against the photographic associations that were striving to preserve painterly models, accusing them of being unsubstantial, of having a narrow outlook limited to their own assumptions, and of producing images that were unattractive and removed from reality.

But Neues Sehen was also criticised by the defenders of direct photography and New Objectivity for being too experimental, inconsistent, and producing amateur photography of poor technical standards. To defend themselves against the latter, they created classes of pure photography at the Bauhaus school and evolved toward ever-greater objectivity in photography.

The movement was formed mainly by young Russian Constructivists such as Rodchenko and the Bauhaus teachers László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Peterhans. Bauhaus students highly influenced by the Neues Sehen included Elsa Thiemann, Ivana Tomljenović-Meller, Iwao Yamawaki, Erich Consemüller and Andreas Feininger. Moholy-Nagy's wife, Lucia Moholy, was also a noted Neues Sehen photographer. Their stylistic resources included unexpected angles, experimenting with light and shadows to produce large dark areas in the photograph, the use of photomontage and collage, and photographic composition according to the strict principles of perception of the Bauhaus. Creativity was more developed in the subject matter and in the new way of interpreting the photographic image.

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