“We may say that we see the world with entirely different eyes,” wrote László Moholy-Nagy in 1927. In his manifesto Painting Photography Film, the Bauhaus professor identified photography as the ultimate modern medium. The handheld camera heralded a sense of possibility for artists; while Europe reeled from economic and social upheaval after the first world war, avant-garde artists from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland revelled in radical styles and bold political statements, using photography and photomontage to project their “new vision”.

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945, now in Edinburgh after visiting US galleries, elegantly displays the diverse work of more than 100 photographers – some well-known, such as Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész and Hannah Höch, and others, such as Karel Teige and Otto Umbehr, less so.