Walead Beshty, 2008, photogram with inkjet print, 64.2 x 54.2 cm

In a conversation with László Moholy-Nagy’s grandson, I wondered why no-one in the 1920s had thought to make a folded paper photogram. But his grandfather had indeed made such work, he replied, and by calculus of biography pinpointed their existence to 1928, just as he moved to Berlin. The titles of these photograms, he continued, would be highly descriptive and acknowledge their mode of production. And so later I checked but they never existed, they were pure fiction — something that should have happened but didn’t until now. A flat sheet of photographic paper folded and exposed, overlaid with Photoshop test images —“quotations” of tools which have now transcended their original function twice — first from a tire designed to demonstrate traction, then from an image of a tyre designed to demonstrate resolution.

– Cover of Dot Dot Dot #17, 2009