Name: Busch-Reisinger Museum Lecture with Olivier Lugon—Writing and Reading in the Age of Photography
Start: 2025-10-22T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-22T19:30:00-04:00
Location: Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138

$Busch-Reisinger Museum Lecture with Olivier Lugon\u2014Writing and Reading in the Age of Photography$

Renowned photo historian Olivier Lugon will speak about his recent research on artist László Moholy-Nagy.
In 1925, László Moholy-Nagy introduced a term that would become central to modern graphic design and the practice of layout: “typophoto.” The word referred to a new combination of photographic images and text interacting equally on the printed page, but it also suggested, more fundamentally, a new photographic condition of writing and reading fostered by the emergence of photocomposition. While the idea of a new photographic—and filmic—nature of written communication was shared by early proponents of screen publishing based on microfilm and filmstrip, Moholy-Nagy sought to explore the wide-ranging implications of this photographic conception of text across a variety of media, from book layout to exhibition design and film credits.
Speaker:
Olivier Lugon, Professor in the Department of Film Studies and in the Centre of History of Culture: Literature, Arts and Society, University of Lausanne
The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Doors to the hall will open for seating at 5:30pm. Please enter at Broadway.
This lecture will be recorded and made available for online viewing; check back shortly after the event for the link to view.
Limited complimentary parking is available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.