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This article was downloaded by: [Texas A & M International University]On: 16 August 2015, At: 13:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place,London, SW1P 1WG
History of PhotographyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/thph20
Promoting Constructivism: Kino-fot and Rodchenko's
move into photographyChristina Lodder
Published online: 19 Jan 2015.
To cite this article: Christina Lodder (2000) Promoting Constructivism: Kino-fot and Rodchenko's move into photography,
History of Photography, 24:4, 292-299, DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2000.10443423
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2000.10443423
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Promoting
Constructivism
Kino{ot
and Rodchenko's Move into Photography
Christina Lodder
In March 1921, the Russian Constructivists declared that
they intended to abandon easel painting and the creation of
works
of
art in order to devote themselves to producing
designs for useful objects
as
their way of contributing to the
creation of a new socialist environment.' Unfortunately, in
the circumstances, designing for
mass
production proved to
be well nigh impossible. Seven years
of
almost continual
conflict on Russian soil (the First World War followed
almost immediately by the Civil War) had left the country's
industrial plant decimated and had brought commerce to a
virtual standstill. So drastic was the situation that in early
1921 Lenin had been compelled to implement the New
Economic Policy,
or
NEP, in order to jump-start the
economy by allowing small-scale, free enterprise to coexist
alongside large state-owned concerns.
To
some extent, the Constructivists had the wisdom to
see that in these conditions it might be difficult for them
to implement their maximum programme immediately and
achieve their ultimate goal of becoming industrial designers.
Consequently, their declaration had made provision for
interim measures which involved publicizing their approach
and evolving strategies to secure funding from government
bodies.
2
These tactics included issuing a weekly journal.
The Herald
o
Intellectual Production,
[
Vestnik intellektual nogo
proizvodstva],
and publishing 'brochures and leaflets on problems
connected with the group's activities'.
3
The projected weekly
Herald never appeared and a year later, in March 1922,
Stepanova complained 'it is
not
such an
easy
matter to
conduct agitation for Constructivism and it
is
even more
difficult to reject art and to begin working in production'.
4
The difficulties encountered suggest why, alongside their
somewhat doomed attempts to engage directly with industry
as designers, the Constructivists began to demonstrate and
develop their abilities in other
areas
such
as
poster design, typo
graphy, book production, and photomontage, while devising
design methodologies which they taught at the Moscow
Vkhutemas (The Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops).
By the second half of the 1920s they had
also
become active
in photography.
In 1922 Aleksei Gan, who had written the Programme
of
the First Working Group
of
Constructivists less than
292 ISSN 0308-7298/00 C 2000 Taylor Francis Ltd.
eighteen months before, publicized the artists' position in a
short but highly significant book entitled Constructivism.
5
This provided the fullest exposition of Constructivist theory
and intended practice available to date. It elaborated the
three principles that lay at the
basis of
the Constructivist
approach:
Tektonika, Faktura,
and Construction, embodying
the commitment to communism, industrial production, and
manipulating materials in accordance with the experience
gained from creating works of art. At the same time, Gan's
book
was
clearly conceived as part of the group's campaign to
secure Party support. The main thrust
of
its argument
was
that Constructivism represented the only truly revolutionary
creative trend and therefore it alone should be adopted
as
the official aesthetic
of
the
new
state. Unwisely, Gan's
impassioned pleas for government funding were accompanied
by harsh criticisms of current Party policy towards the arts,
which he castigated as reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
That same year, Gan conceived and published the
magazine Kino-Jot or Cinema-Photo, subtitled The Journal
of Cinematography and Photography'.
6
This was launched
as a weekly, but only six issues appeared between the first
number, dated 25-31 August 1922, and the final issue of
8 January 1923. Despite the allusion to photography in its
name, Kino-jot was primarily about the cinema. It contained
a few articles relating to photography and some notifications
of important inventions such as a machine for developing
prints and the potential
of
ultraviolet
rays,
but
the essential
focus
of
the journal
was
cinema. Indeed, for a time Kino-Jot
acted as the professional journal
of
the industry.
Its
coverage
was comprehensive and included information about technical
inventions, Western developments, individual artists such as
Charlie Chaplin and Viking Eggeling,
as
well as Thomas
Edison's activities, the cinematic adventures
of
Harry Piel,
administrative changes in the Russian film industry, and the
character
of
ftlm schools and teaching. Each issue
also
con
tained summaries
of
recent film scenarios. More importantly,
Kino-Jot acted
as
an important forum for the debate
con
cerning the
new
cinema, presenting a variety
of
progressive
viewpoints on its pages. The very first issue contained state
ments by
two
of the foremost innovators in Soviet cinema
at this time, Dziga Vertov and Lev Kuleshov, including the
HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. VOLUME 24.
NUMBER
4.
WINTER
2000
8/19/2019 Llodder_C-Promoting Constructivism Kino-fot and Rodchenko s Move Into Photography 9pp
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former's first public declaration: 'We: Variant of a Manifesto'.
7
Subsequent numbers printed stills from Vertov's Kino-pravda
or
Cinema-
Truth newsreels as well as his texts 'Cinema
Truth and He and 1'.
8
Kuleshov was
no
less
prominently
featured: five extensive essays appeared in the first three
issues
of
the magazine.
9
Although there were fundamental
differences in the approaches
of
the two fum-makers, they
were united in rejecting the conventions
of
commercial
cinematography, especially the theatrical element that per
sisted in contemporary ftlms. They
a l ~ o
shared an emphatic
commitment to producing a new Soviet cinema, based on
the principles of montage, which they considered reflected
the essential reality
of
the proletarian state.
10
Why did Gan, the theorist
of
Constuctivism, suddenly
become involved in the cinema?
The
term 'Constructivism'
was not used in any of Gan's editorials and appeared only a
couple of times in
Kino1ot,
yet there are good grounds for
concluding that far from abandoning Constructivism, Gan
conceived the journal
as
a further attempt to promote the
movement. Kino1ot s connection with Constructivism was
visually implicit in its pages, which were profusely illustrated
with reproductions of work by Aleksandr Rodchenko and
Varvara Stepanova. Along with Gan, these
two
had been
founder members of he First Working Group of Constructivists.
The three were clearly close friends and collaborators. Ten
ofStepanova's drawings ofCharlie Chaplin were reproduced
in the third issue of Kino1ot, and one was used as the cover.
11
Rodchenko was an even more regular contributor. He
designed covers for four of the magazine's six issues and the
first five numbers each contained at least two reproductions
of
his works.
12
The complete run included examples
of
his
constructions, paintings, collages, kiosk designs and also his
graphic devices for Vertov's Kino-pravda newsreels, which are
discussed below.
The
alliance between Rodchenko's aesthetic
practice and the journal was explicit in the visual organization
of ive ofGan s six editorial statements, which were illustrated
by at least one example of Rodchenko's creative output.
This close visual link highlighted the ideological and creative
continuity between Kino1ot and Constructivism. But why
did the C'.onstructivists choose to extend their sphere
of
operations into fum at this juncture? Lenin was known
to favour the cinema
as
the most important art form
of
the twentieth century, and tactical considerations may well
have motivated Gan to launch a journal which highlighted
this particular medium. Not only would this be a means
of
obtaining government endorsement for at least one
Constructivist venture, but harnessing fum would strengthen
the Constructivists' strategic position. The timing seems to
confirm this hypothesis. Kino1ot appeared only six months
after Lenin's Directive
on
Cinematic Affairs of
17
January
1922 had become law. The Bolshevik leader aimed to
create a Soviet film industry that would effectively inculcate
Communist values through newsreels and propaganda
ftlms.
The directive also stipulated that 'photographs
of
propaganda
interest should be shown with the appropriate captions'.
13
Kino-Jot
created a close alliance between the Constructivist
artists and progressive ftlm makers and crucial for the
subsequent development of Constructivism - particularly,
Kino1ot and
Rodchenko s
Move into
Photography
for the emergence
of
Constructivist photography. Kino1ot
shows that an interest in photography emerged very early
within Constructivist circles and was not simply a later
development, a product of disenchantment with official
policy, or a desperate attempt to compromise with the state's
demands for a realist art.
On
the contrary, the journal
indicates that the Constructivists responded immediately and
positively to Lenin's Directive concerning the cinema: they saw
the propaganda potential of the two media; and they focused
on progressive cinematic theory and practice, harnessing
them to the Constructivist cause and seeking ways to extend
them
into the area ofphotography. Such a move was possible
precisely because the Constructivists realized that there were
strong similarities between their standpoint and that
of
the
avant-garde film-makers.
14
In August 1922, in the very first
issue of
Kino1ot,
Gan's editorial laid down the theoretical
foundations for the development of Constructivist alternatives
to easel painting and other forms
of
purely aesthetic activity.
He wrote:
And everything previously done in
an
amateurish way by
the arts of painting, sound and movement with the aim of
organizing our emotions is now automatically done by the
extended organs of society - through technology, and in this
specific case, by the cinema.
Cinema,
as
the quintessentially labouring apparatus
of
social
technology, as the extended 'organ' of society,
is
a matter for
the proletarian state.
15
Like Lenin, Gan presented photography
as
a vital propaganda
tool and an adjunct to cinema, which he described as 'living
photography'
16
Gan's argument was that the products of
technology such
as
film (and by extension photography)
should now take over the role previously performed by art,
which was outmoded. This represented a slight, but very
important, modification
of
the Constructivist position. The
slogan 'Death to art' now became in effect
The
new
proletarian art is film and photography'}
7
Gan remained
true to the Constructivists' celebration
of
the machine, their
antipathy to art and their ambition to contribute to the
construction of the
new
communist environment which had
been stipulated by the 1921 programme,
but
he now allied
these ideals with those of the new cinema and by implication
photography.
In
Kino1ot
Gan celebrated the achievements
of
Russia's
progressive cinema and in effect presented them
as
a paradigm
for development in this area.
The
Constructivists did not
have the expertise to become film-makers, but they could
become involved in film
as
designers and could work with
photographs in photomontage and actually become photo
graphers. There were
no
existing cadres
of
experimental
photography in Russia with which they could
ally
themselves,
but ftlm theory and practice was already quite developed
and could provide a standard in theoretical and practical
terms for Constructivist photography. Gan's new position
and message would
not
have been lost on his artist colleagues
in the First Working Group
of
Constructivists. For an artist
like Rodchenko, committed to implementing Constructivist
ideals, the theories and practice of Vertov in particular acted
293
8/19/2019 Llodder_C-Promoting Constructivism Kino-fot and Rodchenko s Move Into Photography 9pp
4/9
Christina
Lodder
as
a powerful stimulus and exerted an important influence
on the way that he developed his photomontages and then
composed his own photographs from 1925 onwards.
It
is clear that Rodchenko was profoundly interested in
cinema and attached enormous artistic and ideological signi
ficance to it.
As
well
as
supplying
i l l u ~ t r a t i o n s
for
Kino{ot,
he actually contributed
an
article about Charlie Chaplin.
18
On
one level this text reads simply
as
an enthusiastic appreciation
of
Chaplin' s artistry.
On
another, it presents a political inter
pretation
of
the actor's approach. Rodchenko considered that
the very simplicity of Chaplin's act ing style and his rejection
of
conventional techniques had revolutionary implications.
Chaplin's work was important because it epitomized Lenin's
principles as well as the latest technological achievements.
Rodchenko regarded it as a product of precisely those
same ideological and practical factors that had provided the
foundations for creating the new Soviet man. In relation to
the latter he produced a striking equation:
THE MASTER OF THE
MASSES is
Lenin and
Edison
communism
and
technology
9
This is fairly cryptic. It perhaps means that forging the new
state requires Lenin as a practical leader and communism as
the guiding ideology, as well as the cinema to propagandize
these ideas and the resources of technology to implement
them in practical terms. In whatever way this equation is inter
preted, it and the text of which it forms a part indicate that
Rodchenko shared Gan's views concerning the revolutionary
and aesthetic role
of
the cinema and photography.
It is, of course, Rodchenko's use of the technique of
photomontage that seems to offer the closest affinity to the
cinematic methods advocated in
Kino{ot.
Both Kuleshov and
Vertov considered montage to be cmcial to the development
of
the new cinema. For Kuleshov, montage, i.e. the way in
which sections
of
film were joined, was the quintessential
quality of cinema and ultimately the source of its impact on
the viewer. He stressed that what is important is not what
is shot in a given piece, but how the pieces in a film succeed
one another, how they are stmctured'
20
He wrote: 'the
essence of the cinema, its method of achieving maximal
expression,
is
montage',
21
in the case of the construction
of
any material, the cmcial
moment
is the organizational
moment, during which the relationship of the parts to the
material and their organic, spatial and temporal connections
are revealed'.
22
Kuleshov was concerned to create a semiology of film
structure and he defined the shot as a 'shot sign', which
would be combined as a 'word equivalent' into a filmed
sequence
or
sentence.
3
In 1920, when he had finished making
newsreels at the front line, he set up a studio where he
explored the practical applications ofmontage; he synthesized
the image of a woman by combining aspects taken from
several different women's bodies and he investigated how
the viewer's consciousness could be manipulated by montage.
He believed that by using montage alone the film-maker
could create a cinematic experience or terrain which existed
nowhere in reality?
4
Vertov held similar views. In an article
published
in
1923 in Lef, the magazine of the
Left
Front
o
294
the Arts, for which Rodchenko designed the covers, Vertov
emphasized the liberation that montage could produce:
'Freed from the rule of
sixteen-seventeen frames
per
second,
free of the limits of time and space, I put together any given
points in the universe,
no
matter where I've recorded
them'
25
Vertov stressed that this resulted in a completely
new
view of the world: My path leads to the creation of
a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a new way a
world unknown to you'.
26
Gan was a great advocate of Vertov's work, and was
particularly enthusiastic about the thirteenth issue of
Kino
pravda, which in his opinion attained the status
of
'pure
montage' and epitomized Vertov's successful 'attempts to join
together various subjects into a single agitational whole'.
27
Gan had probably
met
Vertov while both were working at
Narkompros during the Civil War; Gan had been developing
mass
theatrical spectacles in the Theatrical Department at
the same time
as
Vertov had been editing newsreels for the
Film Committee.
28
Vertov's 'We: Variant
of
a Manifesto'
demonstrates precisely why the two men would have felt an
affinity. Just as Constructivism had called for death to art, as
conventionally understood, so Vertov called for the demise
of conventional cinematography; he wanted to purify film
by removing extraneous psychological, musical, literary, and
theatrical elements. Likewise, Vertov and the Constructivists
were both committed to the Revolut ion and to the machine.
Vertov declared that For us the joy of dancing saws in a
sawmill is more familiar and easier to understand than the
joy
of human dancing'. He envisaged
the new
man ... with
the precise, light movements of the machine'
29
Shared aesthetic standpoints also underpinned the collab
oration between Rodchenko and Vertov and the former's
direct involvement in cinema. It is not known exactly when
the two
men
met. It
is
possible that they had known each
other
in Narkompros, where Rodchenko had worked in the
Fine Art Department, or they may have been introduced
by
Gan.
30
In November 1922, Rodchenko executed graphic
work for Vertov's
Kino-pravda
films and even designed the
Kino-pravda
logo.
31
The collaboration between the two men
was celebrated in
Kino{ot
which reproduced Rodchenko's
titles for the thirteenth issue of
Kino-pravda
(figure 1).
32
Gan,
in an eulogistic commentary
on
the designs, coined the term
'screen
word
to describe the device for 'Lenin', the letters
of which filled the column or frame, and
he
praised it
as
an
example
of
an artist speaking a 'cinematographic language'.
33
He enthused: A title
[is)
like an electric flex, like an electricity
conductor through which the screen feeds on shining
reality'.
34
Rodchenko's designs were striving to reinforce the
film's message
by
fusing text and image. Hence, the word
zovut (meaning 'they call') is integrated into the image of
a loudspeaker, and k mirovomu ('to world') is denoted by a
large K and a schematic wheel with cogs, while Oktiabr
(October), a word which had become shorthand for the
Revolution itself, covers the five-pointed star which is the
device of the Red Army. The constraints of the medium
meant that R.odchenko's designs had to operate exclusively
in black and white and had to create a visual impact and
convey a message immediately. Rodchenko had probably
been following Vertov's texts, rather than writing his
own
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