Nathan Lerner

numbered '14' in the negative, signed, titled, dated, and annotated 'second semester' and 'Institute of Design Class Kepes-Smith' in pencil and with 'the new bauhaus chicago' stamp on the reverse, framed, 1937, printed in 1938 (Daiter, Light and Vision, p. 15, this print)

The photographer to a former student or faculty member at the Institute of Design, Chicago

Stephen Daiter Gallery, 1980s

Danziger Gallery, New York, circa 1996

Private New York collection

László Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision: Fundamentals of Design, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (New York, 1938), fig. 164, p. 147

David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2002), pl. 9, p. 40

Stephen Prokopoff, The New Spirit in American Photography (Krannert Art Museum, 1985), unpaginated

This slightly warm-toned, experimental photograph is on semi-glossy double-weight paper. In raking light, signs of wear, including surface scuffs, scratches, and impressions, are visible overall. There is a 2-inch vertical crease that does not break the emulsion in the upper right corner of the image. The margin edges are rubbed and the corners are bumped and creased. The reverse of the print is lightly soiled.
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The photograph offered here is an early image made by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s star pupil at The New Bauhaus in Chicago, Nathan Lerner, using the light box Lerner devised in the school’s inaugural year.  Inspired by light at play on a Moholy-Nagy sculpture, Lerner created a perforated box, lit from without, in which objects could be suspended.  The light box allowed not only for the study of light’s transformative properties on a variety of objects, but also created a means by which to photograph the results, as with the present print.  So integral to the photography curriculum of the school, the light box became a standard means for teaching students about light and photography—in particular, to still life and portraits—in most photography schools.  Lerner’s box was given prime placement in the first gallery of the Art Institute of Chicago’s major 2002 exhibition, Taken By Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971 (The New York Times, May 8, 2002).

In the volume defining his philosophy of art and education, The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Moholy-Nagy dedicates a page to Lerner and this image.  The photograph is captioned ‘N. Lerner (New Bauhaus, first semester, 1937), Light volume study,’ and a portion of Lerner’s own caption reads, 

‘. . . a new period starts where light will be used as a genuine means of expression because of its own qualities, own characteristics.  This photographic experiment reveals the fluid plasticity of light, its ability to radiate, pass, infiltrate, encircle.  Also it reveals that through these actions light is able to create negative patterns, lightless volumes which may be, in time to come, as important as its universally appreciated opposite:  light reflection’ (p. 147). 

After Lerner graduated from the Institute of Design in 1941, he served variously as the head of the Photography department, of the Product Design Workshop, and as Dean of Faculty and Students.  Departing in 1949, he opened a nationally-respected product design office known for a range of everyday objects still in use today—the sponge mop, the plastic honey-bear container, the ball popper push toy, the ‘Chair in a Box,’ and familiar bottle and packaging designs.  Lerner and wife Kiyoko were also responsible for the discovery, just before his death, of neighbor and tenant Henry Darger’s massive trove of art, created from 1930 to 1973.  Darger is now considered a central figure in outsider art, and the Lerners managed his estate and publicized his work.