Soviet Photography at The Jewish Museum

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The “The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography and Early Soviet Film” exhibition at the Jewish Museum offer insight into a period of rapid change in Russia in both politics and art during the 1920s and 30s through fantastic photography–masterpieces of innovative formal development. They also tell an alternate story of early photography that differs from the traditional one of Modernism. In the politically charged climate of Russia, artistic innovation was initially bound to utopian ideals of Communism. This exhibition shows how the codification of visual style from avant-garde Constructivism to a brutal Social Realism parallels a changing society: one that went from revolution and idealism to totalitarian state control over the course of some-twenty years.

IMG_7711In its beginnings, photography was both an art form and documentary tool. Formal and technical developments, such as photograms and photomontage, fascinated artists as walls like the one pictured above testify. The portable, late-1920s model Leica cameras freed photographers from the bulky equipment previously required. The Jewish Museum quotes Lenin as declaring that the camera, as much as the gun, was an important weapon in “class struggle.” Dying in 1924, Lenin would not see how photography came to be used by Stalin and other leaders of the Communist party to assert ideological control.

Arkady Shaikhet, Assembling the Globe at Moscow Telegraph Central Station, 1928, gelatin silver print.

Stunning compositions from 1930s, like Shaikhet’s Assembling the Globe, demonstrate growing state control over the images produced as well as strong formal composition. It depicts the installation of a decorative globe at the new telegraph building in Moscow, but also signifies the building of a new world by faceless workers who could be any man. Divided into thematic sections, one long gallery focuses on images of the “Metropolis” (cityscapes) and “Constructing Socialism” (trains, electricity, and factories). They form a portrait–largely unpeopled–of agrarian village society being drug into a progressive future of large urban areas and technical innovation. Images like Shaiket’s were frequently reproduced in newspapers and on posters.

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Military images including portrait of Stalin, far left.

Stalin, pictured above on far left, consolidated power by 1932 and experimental styles began to be frowned upon. Photography was still used for political purpose, just with tighter control. Final sections of photographs are organized around the themes of the Military, Soviets, Staging Happiness, and Physical Culture. The Military photographs emphasize might, and Soviets portray individuals in a manner that espouse the values of loyal, productive citizens. By the time one reaches Staging Happiness with its impressive fake parades that give the illusion of popular support and Physical Culture with its muscular ideal beauty, the point is clear: experimentation and artistic license gave way to strict state directives that hid the true Socialist experience. Despite this, the photographs on view are often compelling and dynamic works of art, and sometimes one can read against the grain to the shadow side of Soviet life.

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Graphic design at this time was making fantastic leaps and bounds, and fortunately there are display cases of publications throughout the exhibition. The state supported elaborate photo books, such as the one above with its inventive parachute foldout. This 1935 issue of USSR in Construction was designed by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova with extravagant paper foldouts. The journal functioned both a propaganda tool and creative publication that influenced design worldwide. Such design-heavy books featuring positive images of the new Soviet state were also sent abroad.

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In addition to photography, there is a focus on film in a final room of fantastic movie posters and small auditorium. The auditorium regularly screens important Soviet films such as Battleship Potemkin and lesser known gems such as Aelita: Queen of Mars. The rare film posters were printed on the cheapest paper and not considered worth preserving at the time, but their dynamic, geometric designs–instep with the aesthetic of the photographs–suggest their innovation and allure. This emphasis on film makes the point that these posters and films disseminated Communist ideology just as the photographs did, heralding new mediums for propaganda.

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“The Power of Pictures: Soviet Photography and Soviet Film” traces a fascinating history of avant-garde abstraction for radical political purpose that became codified into simplified, heroic forms of Socialist Realism as a totalitarian government took tighter control over its public message. A rare chance to see many of these works together (some 180 works in all, featuring Sergei Eisenstein, El Lissitzky, and Alexander Rodchenko among others), make sure to see this exhibition before it closes February 7, 2016.

Soviet Socialist Republic of Mars

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As I suggested in my last post, Constructivism became the language of the future. Aelita, Queen of Mars was a 1924 silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov. It is often called the first Soviet science fiction film because of its futuristic sets on Mars (although most of it takes place in Moscow). Avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter‘s did the costume designs for the film immediately before she and her husband emigrated to Paris. Prior to that she exhibited with Constructivist artists and taught in Moscow.

The sharp angles and abstracted curves of Constructivism had become associated with science, technology, and human progress. Mars itself, portrayed on the left, looks like the architectonic forms that often appeared on avant-garde canvases at the time. In this elaborate setting of technological advancement, we watch the story of Aelita, Queen of Mars and other fantastically costumed denizens unfold.

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Interiors on Mars, above, costumes (note the maid’s pants!) below.

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The technical advancement of the Martians does not equal social advancement as we learn when the protagonist is finally propelled to Mars in a spaceship–all for the love of Queen Aelita. Mars then becomes not merely a site of escapist fantasy for the viewer, although it was certainly that, but a Utopian space of social change. Or perhaps a chance for the director to toe the part line. Either way, the visitors from earth discover oppressed workers on Mars and try to incite a revolution in order to create a Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics on Mars! I won’t spoil any more of it in case you want to watch it–its available for streaming with English subtitles and accompanying music here.

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The Future Looks Different: A Radical Break in Representations of Science

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Screenshot of the 1960 film The Time Machine

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Screenshot of 1902 film Le Voyage dans la lune

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Raoul Hausmann, Tatlin at Home, 1920, Collage

When H.G. Wells wanted to travel in time in his 1895 science fiction novella, The Time Machine, he rigged up a velvet chair with some ornate brass fixings and levers, and George Méliès sent the first explorers to the moon in his 1902 film, Le Voyage dans la Lune, by pulling the string of a (really) big canon. Think, then, of the radical break of the avant-garde from what we now call a “steampunk” aesthetic. Rather than relying on known objects in the world, avant-garde groups like the Russian Constructivists made an entirely new visual language, one that used geometric, abstract forms and principles of materialism to create a thoroughly modern language. And it can be begun with this man portrayed on the left with the large metal apparatus on his head.

Vladimir Tatlin led the way to this futurist Modern aesthetic of a “skeletal form, modesty of materials, antigravitational thrust, kineticism, and, most crucially, its creation of volume without recourse to mass” (Maria Gough, The Spatial Object). All of which can be seen in his model Monument to the Third International, below. This 1920 design for a grand monumental building by Tatlin was created in response to a call for proposals for monuments, and, more than a monument, it was also meant to be a functional building that housed the headquarters of the Comintern (the Third International). The judges shrugged off the design for a non-figurative monument, and indeed, the technology did not exist in 1920 to build this towering structure containing three internal levels that were meant to revolve at different speeds.

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Vladimir Tatlin, Model of Monument to the Third International, 1920

Meant to be an iconic modern structure, not unlike the Eiffel Tower, Tatlin’s model was hugely influential even if unrealized, notably on Alexander Rodchenko’s Spatial Constructions. The Modernist elements–abstract geometries and undisguised use of materials and construction–became the forms of Constructivism, associated with the progress of science and society to a Utopian, Communist end. This 2006 abstract short film by Theodore Ushev is also inspired by Tatlin’s Tower and uses that same language.

Tower Bawher by Theodore Ushev, National Film Board of Canada