The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937 - Hardcover

Tupitsyn, Margarita

9780300064506: The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300064500 ISBN 13: 9780300064506

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1996

Tupitsyn challenges the view that the Soviet avant-garde peaked in the 1920s and was subsequently forced to conform with Bolshevik politics. Instead she asserts that photography during this period represented the last "great experiment" in the search for the most effective ways to connect art, radical politics, and the masses. Investigating the means by which the new visual tools for disseminating revolutionary messages were adapted to the needs of Stalinist propaganda, Tupitsyn relates major examples of single-frame photography and photomontage to such events as the implementation of the New Economic Policy, Lenin's death, and Stalin's first and second Five-Year Plans, and to mounting censorship of the arts. She also establishes a link between the writings of critics and the development of photography and photomontage at this time. The book presents previously unpublished material from Klutsis's letters, Rodchenko's public lectures, Lissitzky's late writings on the mass media, and Kulagina's personal diaries, as well as many previously unknown photographs.

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About the Author:

Margarita Tupitsyn teaches Soviet art history at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

From Library Journal:

An art historian and Rodchenko's grandson, Lavrentiev (Vavara Stepanova: The Complete Works, MIT, 1991) has compiled a lavish and valuable survey of the Soviet artist's contributions to the field of photography. The more than 400 works reproduced here are largely drawn from his years of greatest creativity and engagement with the avant-garde, 1924-1935. But Lavrentiev has wisely included a selection of Rodchenko's graphic works and photomontages to give context and, surprisingly, a few lyric, even sentimental, color photographs from the 1950s. The short, largely biographical text-printed in English, German, and French-will be of interest for its succinct discussion of Rodchenko's justification of photography as art. Researchers will be most appreciative, however, of the "list of photographs," which includes not only title and year but also details of the camera and lens used and citations to where the work has been published and exhibited, whenever available. Because of the size of his oeuvre, a comprehensive catalog of Rodchenko's works will probably never be produced; this beautiful, yet affordable, volume is a large step toward filling that void. For all libraries collecting works on 20th-century artists. A contributor to Montage & Modern Life, 1919-1942 (MIT, 1992), Tupitsyn here has reworked her dissertation into a suprisingly engaging account of the evolution of Soviet photography from radical artistic experimentation to predictable propaganda tool. Though the writing is at times dry and quote laden, the stories of collaboration among Gustav Klutsis, Elizar Langman, Rodchenko, and others and their eventual dissolution in pursuit of varying ideologies are both well told and well documented. And the publisher is to be commended for not skimping on either the quality of the book's design or the number of illustrations, which are consistently relevant to and well integrated with the text. This will be a valuable addition to any academic library collecting works on the early 20th-century avant gardes.
Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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