Study in Equilibrium c. 1923 - 1950

Curator: Today, we're looking at Lucia Moholy's photograph, "Study in Equilibrium," housed here at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It's oddly unsettling, isn't it? Stark and skeletal, like a machine stripped bare. Curator: Moholy was deeply embedded in the Bauhaus movement. Her photography played a crucial role in documenting its workshops and designs. Editor: This image has the feel of a construction site, the base components of some larger, perhaps unrealizable, object. The raw materials themselves become the subject. Curator: Absolutely. It speaks to the Bauhaus ethos of merging art with industry and challenging traditional artistic hierarchies. Editor: And think of the labor involved, the precise arrangement of these components. It's a meditation on the value of craft within the industrial age. Curator: Moholy's photographs were instrumental in shaping the Bauhaus's public image, often overshadowing the individual artisans whose work they documented. Editor: Right, the tension between documentation and artistic authorship is palpable. It forces us to question whose labor is truly being represented.