Modern Objects

Modern Objects

3-5 Swallow Street London, W1B 4DE, United Kingdom Monday, May 1, 2023–Sunday, May 28, 2023


books by manuel álvarez bravo

Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Books, 1930

Price on Request

nitrogen fermentation tanks by margaret bourke-white

Margaret Bourke-White

Nitrogen Fermentation Tanks, 1932

Price on Request

untitled, (agave), 1930s by imogen cunningham

Imogen Cunningham

Untitled, (Agave), 1930s

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still life by jaromír funke

Jaromír Funke

Still Life, ca. 1923

Price on Request

abstraction by jaromír funke

Jaromír Funke

Abstraction, 1928

Price on Request

mondrian's glasses and pipe, paris, france by andré kertész

André Kertész

Mondrian's Glasses and Pipe, Paris, France, 1926

Price on Request

modernist tree study by andré kertész

André Kertész

Modernist Tree Study, 1923

Price on Request

photomontage with chess pieces and woman by françois kollar

François Kollar

Photomontage with Chess Pieces and Woman, 1946

Price on Request

surreal still life of feather, marbles and crystal by emile langui

Circle of Emile Langui

Surreal Still Life of Feather, Marbles and Crystal, ca. 1928

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telephone wires by tina modotti

Tina Modotti

Telephone Wires, 1923–1929

Price on Request

experiment in related from or glasses by tina modotti

Tina Modotti

Experiment in Related From or Glasses, 1924

Price on Request

city shell (photomontage) by barbara morgan

Barbara Morgan

City Shell (Photomontage), 1938

Price on Request

Huxley-Parlour are pleased to announce Modern Objects, an exhibition that explores the radical shifts in photography as Modernism dawned. Taking the genre of still life as its conceptual foundation, the exhibition examines image-making in the age of expanding mass-production, burgeoning consumerism, and reification of the object. The photographers in the exhibition each lent fresh perspectives to this rapidly modernising world.


Includes: Manual Alvarez Bravo, Margaret Bourke White, Imogen Cunningham, Jaromir Funke, Andre Kertesz, Francois Kollar, Dora Maar, Tina Modotti, Barbara Morgan, Paul Outerbridge, Jaroslav Rossler, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston

The tumultuous cultural and social shifts in the years after the First World War required an artistic means of breaking with dominant discourses and dismantling established traditions. It was in this fertile ground that photographers rejected the prevailing Pictorialism, and set forth an experimental new vision for the medium, influenced by significant cultural shifts and wider developments of Modernism. In his 1935 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ the theorist Walter Benjamin acknowledged a new artistic order, distinct from that which had come before. Central to Benjamin’s critique was the expansion of mass-production and the dawning of the age of consumerism and object fetishisation.