Elements of Photography

This essay traces the evolution of landscape imagery in Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photographic oeuvre, focusing especially on images produced during his journalistic trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, one of the first Soviet forced labor camps. Through close reading of photographs, it argues that Rodch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Representations
Main Author: Glebova, Aglaya
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: University of California Press 2018
Subjects:
Sociology and Political Science
General Arts and Humanities
Cultural Studies
Gender Studies
White Sea
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rep.2018.142.1.56
http://online.ucpress.edu/representations/article-pdf/142/1/56/327868/rep_2018_142_1_56.pdf
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Summary:This essay traces the evolution of landscape imagery in Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photographic oeuvre, focusing especially on images produced during his journalistic trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, one of the first Soviet forced labor camps. Through close reading of photographs, it argues that Rodchenko’s abandonment of avant-garde aesthetics, in particular the emphasis on photography’s transformative powers and its medium-specificity, in these images did not represent a shift toward socialist realism but, rather, held critical potential in the face of contemporaneous official censure of formalism and “contemplation” in both science and art.

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