Yuichi Idaka and László Moholy-Nagy: War Bonds

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a Hungarian artist and professor at the Bauhaus from 1923-1928. In 1939, Moholy-Nagy founded the Institute of Design in Chicago, today known as the Illinois Institute of Technology. Moholy-Nagy wrote several books including Painting, Photography, Film (1927) and Vision in Motion (1947). In 2003, the Moholy-Nagy Foundation was created to foster and share knowledge about the artist’s life and work. In 2016, he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Yuichi “Eugene” Idaka (1914-2012) was born to Japanese immigrants in Seattle, WA. After spending significant time during his childhood in Japan, he moved to Chicago in 1928 and helped run a Japanese Camera Club in the city. Idaka studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago from 1942-45 and taught there part-time from 1945-47 while working as a freelance photographer. He opened his own photography and design studio at 49 West Ontario – along with Angelo Testa and Edgar Bartolucci, fellow students at the Institute of Design – and later specialized in architectural photography. His work was featured in publications including Florida Architecture magazine, Architectural Digest, and The New York Times.