Typophoto

New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography

Jessica D. Brier

$54.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of Minnesota Press
05 May 2025

History of Art & Design Styles; Photography & photographs; Graphic design; Typography & lettering

Unveiling the avant-garde fusion of photography and modern graphic design

The concept Typophoto, the synthesis of photography and typography, was coined by renowned Bauhaus artist and theorist Lszl Moholy-Nagy and played a foundational role in the modernist graphic design movement known as the New Typography. Jessica D. Brier examines how Typophoto was embraced by early graphic designers-a group who ultimately reinvented photography as a tool of modern consumerism.

Typophoto embodied designers' belief in photography as an efficient form of visual communication, merging the material and the visual by abstracting both typographic and photographic form and transmuting photography into graphic material through the halftone process. Uniquely situating 1920s advertising discourse alongside avant-garde theory and significant interwar photographic concepts, Brier positions Typophoto as an analytical framework for considering how photography-as process, image, material, and metaphor-was effectively reconceived through the professionalization of graphic design in Europe and the United States. This was particularly true in Germany, where the capitalist ethos driving the country's economic recovery bolstered the belief that graphics could create ideal reader-consumers.

Tracing Typophoto from its inception through New Typography's experiments with the medium, Brier demonstrates how photography was used as a tool for manipulating perception as it became a visual language of modern life.

By: Jessica D. Brier
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 178mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 425g
ISBN: 9781517918231
ISBN 10: 1517918235
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 05 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Jessica D. Brier is curator of photography at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. She is editor of On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print and coeditor of Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna.

Reviews for Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography

""A novel interplay between text and image, Typophoto fused--as Jessica D. Brier demonstrates in this insightful account--the interests of advertisers with those of the avant-garde, thus instigating a process that ultimately resulted in the ubiquitous pixelated imagery of our own day.""--Kathleen James-Chakraborty, author of Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany ""In this deeply researched book, Jessica D. Brier examines the close relationship between photography, typography, and mass printing in the interwar period, revealing the extent to which this both transformed the landscape of printed matter and the modes of seeing that it engendered. Above all, she highlights the ways new print technologies enabled photography to become the central medium of modernist visual culture. Alongside the key theorists László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and Jan Tschichold, she also brings lesser-known artist-designers like Max Burchartz, Johannes Molzahn, and Georg Trump to the forefront, indicating the range and depth of work produced under the banner of Typophoto.""--Paul Stirton, author of Jan Tschichold and the New Typography: Graphic Design Between the World Wars