llodder_c-promoting constructivism kino-fot and rodchenko s move into photography 9pp

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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

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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


3/9

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


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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llodder_c-promoting constructivism kino-fot and rodchenko s move into photography 9pp

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