The New Vision movement of the 1920s and 1930s offered a revolutionary approach to seeing the world. It represented a rebellion against traditional photographic methods and an embrace of avant-garde experimentation and innovative techniques. László Moholy-Nagy, an artist and influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, named this period of expansion the “New Vision.” Today, the term encompasses photographic developments that took place between the two World Wars in Europe, America, and beyond. New Vision photographers foregrounded inventive techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favored extreme angles and unusual viewpoints. These approaches—which also extended to more defined movements like Surrealism—spoke to a desire to find and see different perspectives in the wake of World War I.
Uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s photography collection, the exhibition traces the movement’s impact, from its origins in the 1920s to today, and demonstrates its long-standing effect on subsequent generations.
Photography´s New Vision
Experiments in Seeing
until 4 January, 2026
High Museum of Art
1280 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
https://high.org
Imogen Cunningham American, 1883–1976 Agave Design I, ca. 1920
László Moholy-Nagy Hungarian, 1895–1946 Lucia Moholy British, born Czechoslovakia, 1894–1989 Stage Set for “Madame Butterfly,” 1931
Barbara Morgan American, 1900–1992 Protest, 1940
Aaron Siskind American, 1903–1991 Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37, 1953
Hiroshi Sugimoto Japanese, born 1948 Lightning Fields 182, 2009
Alexander Rodchenko Russian, 1891–1956 Sbor na demonstratsia (Gathering for a Demonstration), 1928, printed 1970s
V. Elizabeth Turk American, born 1945 Calaeno, 2018 Van Dyke print
Florence Henri Swiss, born United States, 1893–1982 Composition, 1932, printed 1974
Walker Evans American, 1903–1975 The Bridge, 1929
Eugène Atget French, 1857–1927 Men’s Fashions, 1925, printed 1956