POLITICAL IMAGES: SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHERS

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Led by Arkadii Shaikhet, Boris Ignatovich, Georgii Petrusov and Aleksandr Rodchenko among others, many artists of the Russian avant garde embraced the Revolution as the triumph of a new socialist order. These artists assigned a particular importance to photography as a tool for a new realism in the service of a new society, settling on the camera as an ideal instrument for social portraiture, and for the education of the population in a Communist way of life. The trajectory of Russian photography parallels the fate of Soviet culture at large, from the relative freedoms of the 1920s to the image propaganda and censoriousness of Stalin after 1936,when all artistic labor was subject to Party directives. Drawing on Daniela Mrázkowá’s unique collection of over 200 photographs from this era, Political Images reveals a poignantly telling moment in the history of avantgarde modernism.