Toilet Paper

An art critic by trade, Schell was inspired to try photography in his early thirties after seeing prints by the renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1912 he opened a small studio on Lexington Avenue in New York, followed by another one in London, where he spent his summers. After garnering almost immediate acclaim as a portraitist of the Pictorial school, he turned to architecture and other subjects, eventually becoming a favored artist at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Some of Schell’s photographs were also used by Levy for an unrealized project to create design objects, such as lamp shades and cigarette packs, from photographic prints. This dramatic depiction of bathroom tissue mixes the commercial aspects of Levy’s project with the graphic composition for which Schell became known.