During the summer of 2017, I utilized the generous Cosmos Club fellowship to travel to Berlin and conduct research at the numerous archives in that city, including the Kunstbibliothek, the Staatsbibliothek, and the Bauhaus Archiv/Museum of Design. This primary research was of fundamental importance to my dissertation, which reconsiders the role Lucia Moholy, a modernist photographer in Weimar Germany, held at the Bauhaus School. From images capturing the avant-garde building designs of the Bauhaus to portraits sensitively exploring the phenomenon of the New Woman, Moholy’s oeuvre demonstrates her innovative engagement with contemporary artistic and cultural concerns. Immersed in the dynamic, radical environment of the Bauhaus, Moholy explored the potential for modernist representative photography. The Cosmos Club fellowship allowed me the opportunity to clarify the context in which Moholy was working and the depiction of women in popular culture in Weimar Germany.
