La Toilette

Raoul Hausmann|Vera Broido

ca. 1930, printed later · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

One of the founders of Berlin Dada in 1918, Hausmann worked in a range of materials, making sculptural assemblages and photocollages, before becoming primarily a photographer in the late 1920s. This work, depicting a seated woman bent over her washbasin, is equal parts tradition and avant-garde exploration. Like nineteenth-century paintings of women at their toilette, the figure is presented to our gaze as an object for consumption. Yet Hausmann employed a steep viewing angle from above, disrupting our sense of space and direction, and refusing a coherent depiction of the female body.

Artist

Raoul Hausmann|Vera Broido

Date

ca. 1930, printed later

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

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