ABSTRACT
We see a young man standing tall, a look of intense concentration on his face. His eyelids are lowered. Behind him stands a woman (Figure 1.1).1 They are outdoors under a gray sky. Her tanned right hand is visible as it lightly touches his shoulder, her eyes downcast. Their contact is intense, but not erotic. His focus seems inwards, towards his body, which is what engages the woman. We know that the young man is the Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy, and, judging by his age, that this photograph dates to the Bauhaus’ Dessau period (1925–1928). We do not know who the young woman is, but we are reasonably certain that she is conducting “Gindler Therapy,” a practice of bodywork developed by Elsa Gindler in close association with her partner from 1926 onwards, the biocentric Swiss music pedagogue Heinrich Jacoby, a therapy that intended to make the recipient more aware of both her environment and her own body.2 Given the prevailing image of the Dessau Bauhaus as a kind of fortress of hard-nosed rationalistic thinking and practice, one might ask oneself “What was Moholy-Nagy, clad in his overalls, doing engaging in this practice?”
