School of Light

Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) hailed photography and film as bringing a new ‘culture of light’ into art.

Moholy-Nagy saw photographic experimentation overtaking even the most innovative aspects of painting. He began teaching at the Bauhaus, an avant-garde art school in Germany, in 1923. His influence reached far beyond Germany to include artists like György Kepes’ (1906–2001) and Luigi Veronesi (1908–1998), whose photographic work focused primarily on darkroom experiments and abstract imagery. Moholy-Nagy’s fellow teacher at the Bauhaus, Josef Albers (1888–1976), taught his students not to use shading, but pure lines, arguing that colour is relative to the viewer’s perception. The images they made investigate how light reflects, refracts and scatters in response to different objects.

These ideas spread as artists around the world experimented and thought about light through the medium of photography. Moholy-Nagy celebrated photography’s ability to transform the appearance of reality – whether structure or texture – into pure light phenomena. This approach is reflected in the emphasis on light and shadow in experimental photography during this time.

光之学院派

匈牙利艺术家拉斯洛·莫霍利-纳吉（1895–1946)）称赞摄影和电影为艺术引入了新的“光文化”。

莫霍利-纳吉认为摄影实验甚至超越了绘画中最具创新性的方面。1923年，他被聘为德国包豪斯艺术学院的教授。他的影响力远不止于德国，乔治·凯普斯（1906-2001）和路易吉·维洛内西

（1908-1998）等艺术家深受其影响，他们的摄影作品主要聚焦暗室实验和抽象意象。正如莫霍利-纳吉在包豪斯的同事约瑟夫·阿尔伯斯(1888-1976)那样，他教导学生运用纯线条而不是阴影。他认为，颜色与观者的感知相关。他们创作的图像研究了光线如何在不同的物体上反射、折射和散射。

随着世界各地的艺术家通过摄影媒介对光进行实验和思考，这些理论逐渐传播开来。莫霍利-纳吉赞扬了摄影将现实表象（结构或是纹理）转化为纯粹光现象的能力。这种方法体现在这一时期实验摄影对光影的强调上。