1902-1980 Umbo

Next to Laszalo Moholy-Nagy, Umbo was probably the most significant photographer of the Bauhaus. Born Otto Umbehr in 1902, he began his career with an archaic old travel camera. Nonetheless, the very first portraits he produced with this limited equipment were masterpieces. His early close-ups of women’s faces made a stir with their unusually abstract quality and hard black-white contrasts.