Chicago, Impression at Night

Gordon H. Coster

1932 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Coster began his career as a commercial photographer for the prestigious Underwood & Underwood studio, first in New York and later in Chicago, where he created advertisements for Marshall Field’s, among other clients. Influenced by the formal experiments of European New Vision photographers such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Coster created a series of dynamic abstracted views of Chicago at night in the early 1930s. During World War II Coster shifted his focus to photojournalism, reporting on labor and civil-rights issues for Life and Fortune magazines. In 1946 Moholy-Nagy invited him to lecture on New Vision photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where Coster continued to teach on and off through the 1960s.

Artist

Gordon H. Coster

Date

1932

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

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