Juliet's Shadow Caged

György Kepes, professor of visual design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for nearly thirty years, began his teaching career in 1937 at Chicago's New Bauhaus, which was founded by his teacher and Hungarian compatriot László Moholy-Nagy. This institution, where experimental techniques including photograms, photomontages, and solarization were encouraged, became one of the most influential modern schools of photography in the United States. In Juliet's Shadow Caged, the model's head is enclosed in a cubic frame and casts an exaggerated shadow due to raking light from a high angle. The picture is broken up, like sections of stained glass, by the barlike shadows of the frame. With its narrow tonal range of silvery grays, the solarized image seems eerie and otherworldly, passing into the surreal dimension suggested by the title.