Machine Nuts, ca. 1925
Gelatin silver print
33.4 x 23.6 cm (13-1/8x 9-1/4 in.)
86.XM.24

Sigmund Freud published his essay "The Ego and the Id" in 1923, about the time Renger-Patzsch gazed from the base of a giant smokestack to its top; the first English edition of the essay was published in 1927, not long after Bourke-White created this study. "The popular theory of the sexual instinct corresponds closely to the poetic fable of dividing the person into two halves-man and woman- who strive to be reunited through love," wrote Freud. Freud said that mental life must be divided into what is conscious and what is unconscious, a division that photographs frequently mirror. While the conscious aspect of a photograph can be defined with reasonable precision, the role of the unconscious can only be speculated upon. Whether Renger-Patzsch intentionally created a classic icon of the male symbol and Bourke-White a counterpart female symbol, or whether these pictures are simply involuntary manifestations of the unconscious, will never be known for certain.
(MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE related to-->> Japanese)