Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography

A century ago, renowned Bauhaus artist and theorist László Moholy-Nagy coined the term Typophoto, the synthesis of photography and typography, which played a foundational role in the Modernist graphic design movements known as the New Typographers. These designers embraced Typophoto, ultimately reinventing photography as a tool of modern consumerism.

Typophoto embodied designers’ belief in photography as an efficient form of visual communication, and as a tool for manipulating perception, transforming photography into graphic material through the halftone process. Jessica Brier’s book Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography uniquely situates 1920s advertising discourse alongside avant-garde art and photography theory. She explores Typophoto as an analytical framework for considering how photography—as process, image, material, and metaphor—was effectively reconceived through the professionalization of graphic design in Europe and the United States. This was particularly true in Germany, where the capitalist ethos driving the country’s economic recovery bolstered the belief that graphics could create ideal reader-consumers. Through New Typography’s experiments with photography and printing, photography was invaluable as a visual language of modern life.

This book took shape through generous access to rich collections including Letterform Archive. Immediately following this talk, we will look at Letterform Archive treasures that illustrate Typophoto.

Jessica (Jess) Brier is a curator, educator, and historian of art and design with a research focus on modernism and the intersecting histories of photography, print, and design. She serves as curator of photography at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, where she co-organized the exhibition Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna (2024) and organized On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print (2022), both accompanied by catalogs co-published with Scala Arts Publishers. Her first book Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography was published in 2025 by University of Minnesota Press. Brier previously held positions at the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and Headlands Center for the Arts, and served as curatorial assistant in Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her research has been supported by the American Council on Germany, Design History Society, Central European History Society, German Historical Institute, and DesignInquiry. Brier holds a PhD in art history from the University of Southern California and an MA in curatorial practice from the California College of the Arts.