At first glance, it's difficult to notice the connection between two influential visionary creators - László Moholy-Nagy and Dziga Vertov. However, they share something greater than just being born in the same year - and by the end of this article, the connection between them will become obvious.
Moholy-Nagy's "New Instrument of Vision" is not just an essay, but in some sense another photogram: it resembles a reflection, a projection of László's experience in visual art. The text discusses photograms (Moholy-Nagy's great passion), photography, and even cinema - all areas the author worked with in practice. Thus, a practitioner creates theory, which, in my opinion, is very good.
Reading this "photogram," you almost immediately notice that László isn't afraid of a thesis-based approach (though he explains why it's necessary). This is very constructivist and rational, and immediately brought to mind the innovative Bauhaus school, where Moholy-Nagy taught photography. Bauhaus is functional and modern even by today's standards, with everything - from furniture to architecture - done simply and tastefully. Such functionalism and aesthetics are also inherent in László's creations. Moreover, he was a true innovator who used the potential of collage decades before Warhol, promoted photograms alongside other authors, engaged in architectural photography, and created constructivist art from geometric forms.
The Constructivist Connection
I've already mentioned this word twice - constructivism! The second hero of this text, Dziga Vertov, was part of the constructivist movement that even dominated Soviet culture for some time. Unlike the distinctive constructivism of Bauhaus, Soviet constructivism, it seems to me, was largely dictated by the desire to "renounce the old world" and was directly connected to the desire to reorganize everything and everyone, from minds to cities, which according to constructivists' plans were to be transformed into huge communes.
Constructivism in the USSR was heavily ideologized, which is very noticeable in visual art - just look at Alexander Rodchenko's posters, for example. This ideologization didn't bypass Dziga Vertov, many of whose films (like "Kino-Eye" from 1924) appear almost as odes to the new Soviet power. Naturally, Vertov's creations aren't valuable for this - they're valuable for their innovation in visual storytelling and editing.
"Man with a Movie Camera": Revolutionary Filmmaking
The most famous and influential film by this "kinok" (as Dziga Vertov called himself and his like-minded colleagues) is undoubtedly "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929). If any component of the film had not worked properly, be it the camera work or the editing, this film would likely have become just another city symphony, of which many had been released in previous years (among the quality ones, for example, "Symphony of a Great City," released a year before Vertov's symphony - its main character was Weimar Berlin). It's not a problem to shoot, edit, and show the life of a city from dawn to dusk - it's much more difficult to do it in a new, unusual, and captivating way, and Dziga, I believe, succeeded.
But why? Let me take an example from Moholy-Nagy and outline it in theses:
A huge number of innovative visual techniques, interesting even today, but which were something absolutely revolutionary in 1929. Besides unconventional angles, the film features double exposure, time manipulations, first-person view (in some sense, almost the entire film is this), inserts, and much more.
An innovative approach to editing, which, I believe, is the main reason this film gained the status of a classic and became required viewing in film schools. Judge for yourself: parallel editing, lots of parallel editing, the already mentioned inserts, creative combinations of shots, and, conversely, absolutely smooth transitions "according to Kuleshov," as well as editing contrast, as, for example, in episodes where marriage registrations take place, and, at the same time, divorce, or when in the film a scene of a child's birth alternates with a funeral procession.
Visual poetics. I think this doesn't even need commenting - the entire film is built on associative series and visual images. This, in turn, became possible only because of the two previous points.
Crossing Media Boundaries
Let's return to the city symphony genre as such. It's little known, but László Moholy-Nagy also shot his own city symphony, only narrower and more specific - "Gypsies of the Great City." This happened in 1932, just the year when the NSDAP came to power in Germany and methodically set about destroying both gypsies and Bauhaus, and sent Moholy-Nagy himself to the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. This film also shows László's talent in calligraphy and font creation (which was also an important part of Bauhaus). Thus, László Moholy-Nagy can confidently be called a cross-media creator - but can Dziga Vertov be called such? I think not, because apart from his filmography, only poems stand out in Dziga's work - but they are not extraordinary, and quite fit into the futurist-constructivist wave of poetry of his time (now I mean the first decade after the October Revolution).
However, it should be noted that Vertov also had interesting theoretical texts, for example, "Kinoks. Revolution." Having watched any of his films, including even the somewhat atypical "Man with a Movie Camera," one can perfectly imagine what he writes about. He is sharp, categorical, and revolutionary. His texts are like manifestos, written in a corresponding manner. Dziga desires the creation of a new cinematographic language, and this desire would gradually be fulfilled over the following decades.
The Magic of Montage
By the way, the magical editor who made this film what it is was none other than Vertov's wife, Elizaveta. And she also appears in the frame - don't forget, we're watching a film about making a film, not an ordinary city symphony!
Yes, it's important to mention that many, many people didn't like "Man with a Movie Camera." And I can explain this for two reasons. The first reason is that the film is not an ode to communism and the "land of soviets," which is very atypical for the convinced communist Vertov, who earlier almost presented Lenin as a god. But there is another reason, and it is much more interesting.
The film presented a new syntax of cinema, unfamiliar to those who lived surrounded by the dominant silent cinema with intertitles. The visual narrative was completely different, and that notorious language of cinema was in an embryonic state before this. And therefore, for people at that time, watching Vertov's premiere was truly unusual, for some - difficult, and it is quite understandable that "Man with a Movie Camera" received such different reviews. But why is it so easy for us to watch this film today? Precisely because it is one of those films that laid the foundations of modern film language - the language of visual storytelling and good editing.
The New Vision
Such discomfort, possibly, many experienced (and experience) from viewing Moholy-Nagy's photographs, and it's not surprising - they, like Vertov's film, are experimental and avant-garde, unusual and therefore are not something simple and comfortable. But at the same time, László has a lot of minimalism, and that's what I like in his works - by removing the unnecessary, you get something louder and more aesthetic, even if everything surrounding your object is a white background. László is also conceptual, and that's good. He often (both in photography and photograms) features the motif of a hand, which sometimes turns out stunningly beautiful. There's also a lot of geometry and good composition, and, considering Moholy-Nagy's belonging to Bauhaus, this is not surprising at all.
By the way, Dziga also wrote: "Long live dynamic geometry, the races of points, lines, planes, volumes," and in practice embodied this with architectural angles, for example, and all sorts of compositional techniques. And in Moholy-Nagy's art, there is much of what is now called street photography (by the way, this is my favorite genre of photography), however, they are comparatively not as impressive as his other works.
László Moholy-Nagy asserted in "New Instrument of Vision" that it doesn't matter at all whether photography engages in art or not. And in this, he was ahead of his time, because now photography has just received enormous possibilities for utilitarian and universal use - after all, we have a camera in our pocket every day, in our smartphones. I believe that both Vertov and Nagy viewed the camera as an improvement of the eye, and, in that case, all of us now have become none other than homo novovidens - new-seeing people.
Conclusion
Moholy-Nagy and Vertov, though working in different contexts and with different specific goals, shared a revolutionary vision of how technology could transform human perception. Both believed in the power of the camera - whether for still photography or motion pictures - to reveal aspects of reality invisible to the naked eye.
Their work continues to influence visual culture today a lot. All of those experimental techniques pioneered by Vertov have become standard tools in the filmmaker's arsenal, while Moholy-Nagy's approach to photography and design helped establish the foundations of modern visual communication.
As we navigate today's world of ubiquitous cameras and screens, we might consider ourselves the inheritors of their vision - truly becoming homo novovidens, people with a new way of seeing.
Look forward to our next offline events in the heart of forest, and keep inventing your own technologies. For more articles on innovative technology and creative visionaries, visit Innovation Hangar.
