1935

Hungarian-born Francis Haar was initially involved in that country’s strong left-wing social photography movement, then turned to work for the mainstream trade and the government. The Landlord, for example, was part of a state-sponsored tourist initiative. However, its perspective sheds doubt on the fiction of harmonious peasant life: the stout landowner fills the frame, obscuring the distant, faceless farmhands.

• Material: Gelatin silver print
• Size: 29.7 x 24.6 cm
• National Gallery of Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund

1928-9

Expelled from the Bauhaus for ‘idleness’, Umbehr quickly gained renown for his portraits, and by 1927 he had opened his own studio under the professional name Umbo. This photograph of shop window mannequins shows how the photographic view can render something ordinary eerily unfamiliar and presents a surreal view of everyday life.

• Material: Gelatin silver print
• Size: 21 x 29.2 cm
• Kicken Gallery, Berlin

c.1930

The Hungarian Imre Kinszki (1901-1945) took up photography as a hobby in the 1920s and soon became an unshakeable advocate for modern living. His work concentrates on typical scenes of modern daily life and the urban environment. This photograph depicts the celebrated Elizabeth Bridge in Budapest, which at its completion was the world’s longest chain-suspension bridge.

• Material: Gelatin silver print
• Size: 6.1 x 8.4 cm
• National Gallery of Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund

1934

Štyrský was a central figure in the Czech avant-garde. This work forms part of an extensive series of parodic, often unsettling photomontages entitled The Moveable Cabinet. Here, Štyrský takes caricatures of fashionable Parisian life to a fetishistic extreme, underscoring a proclivity for violent sexuality and blindness found in certain of his drawings and paintings as well.

• Material: Photomontage (printed matter)
• Size: 41.5 x 33 cm
• Roy and Mary Cullen, courtesy of Galerie 1900

1938

Escher, among the best photojournalists between the wars in Hungary—a country that schooled such world-class talents as Robert Capa and Martin Munkacsi—was not known for radical politics, but he had a keen eye for parody and a populist sensibility. Caption and image form an indispensable complement in this view of a portly executive using a swimming pool as his washtub.

• Material: Gelatin silver print
• Size: 39.5 x 29 cm
• Hungarian Museum of Photography

1921

This is one of many photographs taken by Hungarian-born Kertész depicting gypsy musicians and villagers. The premise of such works is the distance between the lives of artist and subject; the gypsies are rendered so as to emphasise their separateness from ‘normal’ life.

• Material: Gelatin silver print
• Size: 5.1 x 3.8 cm
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation

1932

On Living is the cover of avant-garde designer Sutnar’s book on the range of upbeat, thoroughly modern offerings available from the design and artisan organisations of which he was a leading member.

• Material: Photolithograph
• Size: 29.5 x 21.6 cm
• Jindřich Toman, Ann Arbor

1932

Polish-born Choynowski is known for his work in two areas: photomontage, which he explored in the early 1930s, and scientific research, following World War II. In this photomontage – originally published as one of a suite of three – Choynowski presents the contradictory values in contemporary America with riveting sensationalism.

• Material: Photomontage (printed matter)
• Size: 55 x 29 cm
• National Museum in Warsaw

1927

František Drtikol was the most famous photographer of dance poses internationally in his day. He contrasted elements of the abstract and the erotic, aiming to fuse them into an ecstatic unity. In this photograph, the nude contrasts with the geometrically shaped props and the shadows they cast.

• Material: Pigment print
• Size: 27.5 x 22.8 cm
• Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague