Author Description

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) was 58 years old when he took up photography. He had been a professor at the Bauhaus for almost a decade, and had enjoyed widespread success as a comic artist and painter. Ever open to new pursuits, and inspired by the works of his photographer sons Lux and Andreas and the experimental photography of his Dessau neighbor László Moholy-Nagy, Feininger took up the camera in 1928 and began to explore a variety of avant-garde techniques. This painter of crystalline architectures and landscapes left a legacy of fascinating unsettling images of shop window mannequins and reflections, nocturnal photographs using double exposures and other works. This is the first publication devoted to this little-known body of work. Examining about 70 original prints, it also relates Feininger's photography to the rest of his extensive oeuvre.