In Full Spectrum

The intention of the exhibition entitled In Full Spectrum. Photography 1900-1950 from the Collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno is to present the principle domains of photography from that period. About three hundred photographs on display will illustrate the links in communication between professional photographers, amateurs, members of artistic groups, photographers working for the media, fashion and advertising and documentarists collaborating with institutions of the historical memory and folk traditions. In addition to avant-garde photography from the extraordinary collection in the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the exhibition will also show the work of photographic salons and photographs depicting social issues, lifestyle and the iconography of its time.

The focus of the exhibition will be aimed at the methods of seeing life via photographic disciplines, movements and styles and their infl uence on society. The unifying and principal motif will be the ways by which photography discovered and "defi ned" the world and, along the way, itself, and the social aspects of the processes and their relationships.

Between 1900 and 1950 photography found a new role in relation to the socialization of the simplifi ed photographic technology and the development of print leading to a radical expansion of its social impact. The timeline for the exhibits is given by the necessity to comprehensively show art photography which, as a movement, emerged shortly before 1900 and which provided an impetus for starting the "Collection of Art Photography of the Moravian Gallery in Brno". The year 1950 is a watershed due to the political coup of 1948 and its reverberations. Alongside photographers presented at foreign events the exhibition will also show unjustifi ably neglected artists of a more conservative vein and documentarists.

The exhibition will give a new insight into the culture of the fi rst half of the inter-war period. The selected photographs will not represent just individual artists, but above all "models" for using the medium of photography. Originals from the collection by such names as F. Drtikol, J. Funke, V. J. Bufka and others will be accompanied by examples from magazines, catalogues, publications, promotion and advertising and labels on photographs.