Joost Schmidt was first a student and later an instructor at
the Bauhaus, the revolutionary German design school that emphasized
experimentation and discovery over traditional technique. Bauhaus students
frequently took pictures from unique perspectives and angles and explored the
line between objective reality and experimental abstraction. This small contact
print—made by placing the negative in direct contact with the photographic
paper— preserves all the dizzying detail of the wood grain, making depth and
distance ambiguous. Schmidt pushed “straight” photography to the edge of
abstraction through careful setup, an odd camera angle, and a decisive printing
technique.