[A Woman's Lips]

Martin Munkácsi

ca. 1929 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

When Martin Munkacsi arrived in Berlin in 1927, he found a metropolis bursting with artistic innovation. Photography was particularly fertile ground for the principles of Surrealism, the New Vision, and the New Objectivity, all of which had captured the imaginations of many avant-garde photographers. Munkacsi was introduced to these ideas through his employer Kurt Safranski, the managing editor of the Ullstein publications, and began to conduct his own experiments in the late 1920s. This image was likely one such enterprise; it features the close-up view favored by avant-garde photographers, and the unusual cropping is characteristic of Surrealism, in which disembodied lips regularly materialized as erotic symbols.

Artist

Martin Munkácsi

Date

ca. 1929

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987