Eye on Nails

Dozens of sharp nails penetrate a wood plank. Each spike casts a short shadow while a lone eye floats eerily above. Eyes were a favorite motif of Nathan Lerner, who incor-porated them into photographs that evoke fright and delight. Mentored at the New Bauhaus in Chicago (later the Institute of Design) by professors László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes, Lerner developed the method used here, a process he called “montage without scissors.” He used a mirror with part of its reflective surface scratched off to combine images on a single negative without using multiple exposures.