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Promoting Constructivism: Kino-fot and Rodchenko's

move into photography
Christina 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

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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 of 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, typography, 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 contained summaries of recent film scenarios. More importantly,
Kino-Jot acted as an important forum for the debate concerning the new cinema, presenting a variety of progressive
viewpoints on its pages. The very first issue contained statements 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

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Kino1ot and Rodchenko 's Move into Photography

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 'CinemaTruth' 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 persisted in contemporary ftlms. They al.~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 the First Working Group of Constructivists.
The three were clearly close friends and collaborators. Ten
ofStepanova's drawings of Charlie 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 five 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 wa~ crucial for the
subsequent development of Constructivism - particularly,

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 of photography. 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 photographers. 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

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Christina Lodder
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 Kinopravda, 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'
THE MASTER OF THE MASSES is
demonstrates precisely why the two men would have felt an
Lenin and Edison
9
affinity.
Just as Constructivism had called for death to art, as
communism and technology!
conventionally understood, so Vertov called for the demise
This is fairly cryptic. It perhaps means that forging the new of conventional cinematography; he wanted to purify film
state requires Lenin as a practical leader and communism as by removing extraneous psychological, musical, literary, and
the guiding ideology, as well as the cinema to propagandize theatrical elements. Likewise, Vertov and the Constructivists
these ideas and the resources of technology to implement were both committed to the Revolution and to the machine.
them in practical terms. In whatever way this equation is inter- Vertov declared that 'For us the joy of dancing saws in a
preted, it and the text of which it forms a part indicate that sawmill is more familiar and easier to understand than the
Rodchenko shared Gan's views concerning the revolutionary joy of human dancing'. He envisaged 'the new man ... with
the precise, light movements of the machine' .29
and aesthetic role of the cinema and photography.
Shared aesthetic standpoints also underpinned the collabIt is, of course, Rodchenko's use of the technique of
photomontage that seems to offer the closest affinity to the oration between Rodchenko and Vertov and the former's
cinematic methods advocated in Kino{ot. Both Kuleshov and direct involvement in cinema. It is not known exactly when
Vertov considered montage to be cmcial to the development the two men met. It is possible that they had known each
of the new cinema. For Kuleshov, montage, i.e. the way in other in Narkompros, where Rodchenko had worked in the
which sections of film were joined, was the quintessential Fine Art Department, or they may have been introduced by
quality of cinema and ultimately the source of its impact on Gan. 30 In November 1922, Rodchenko executed graphic
the viewer. He stressed that 'what is important is not what work for Vertov's Kino-pravda films and even designed the
is shot in a given piece, but how the pieces in a film succeed Kino-pravda logo. 31 The collaboration between the two men
one another, how they are stmctured' .20 He wrote: 'the was celebrated in Kino{ot which reproduced Rodchenko's
essence of the cinema, its method of achieving maximal titles for the thirteenth issue of Kino-pravda (figure 1). 32 Gan,
expression, is montage', 21 'in the case of the construction in an eulogistic commentary on the designs, coined the term
of any material, the cmcial moment is the organizational 'screen word' to describe the device for 'Lenin', the letters
moment, during which the relationship of the parts to the of which filled the column or frame, and he praised it as an
material and their organic, spatial and temporal connections example of an artist speaking a 'cinematographic language'. 33
He enthused: 'A title [is) like an electric flex, like an electricity
are revealed'. 22
Kuleshov was concerned to create a semiology of film conductor through which the screen feeds on shining
structure and he defined the shot as a 'shot sign', which reality'. 34 Rodchenko's designs were striving to reinforce the
would be combined as a 'word equivalent' into a filmed film's message by fusing text and image. Hence, the word
sequence or sentence. 23 In 1920, when he had finished making zovut (meaning 'they call') is integrated into the image of
newsreels at the front line, he set up a studio where he a loudspeaker, and k mirovomu ('to world') is denoted by a
explored the practical applications of montage; he synthesized large 'K and a schematic wheel with cogs, while Oktiabr'
the image of a woman by combining aspects taken from (October), a word which had become shorthand for the
several different women's bodies and he investigated how Revolution itself, covers the five-pointed star which is the
the viewer's consciousness could be manipulated by montage. device of the Red Army. The constraints of the medium
He believed that by using montage alone the film-maker meant that R.odchenko's designs had to operate exclusively
could create a cinematic experience or terrain which existed in black and white and had to create a visual impact and
nowhere in reality?4 Vertov held similar views. In an article convey a message immediately. Rodchenko had probably
published in 1923 in Lef, the magazine of the Left Front of been following Vertov's texts, rather than writing his own

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 significance to it. As well as supplying illu.~trations 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 interpretation of the actor's approach. Rodchenko considered that
the very simplicity of Chaplin's acting 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:

294

Kino1ot and Rodchenko's Move into Photography

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Figure 1. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Tides for Dziga Vertov's thirteenth issue of Kino-pravda, 1922,
as reproduced in Kino-jot 5 (December 1922).

in direct response to the visual stimuli of the film sequences.

Nevertheless, it seems certain that Rodchenko saw the films.
After all, the texts were intended to reinforce the message
conveyed by the cinematic images. The graphics in turn
were conceived to harmonize with the visual and theoretical
underpinnings of Vertov's practice. The cooperation must
have been mutually satisfactory since it continued into
the mid-1920s and Rodchenko designed various posters and
advertisements for Vertov's subsequent ftlrns such as Kinoglaz (Cinema-eye) in 1924 and The Sixth Part of the World
in 1926. 35
Three collages by Rodchenko entitled 'Printed materials
for criticism' were reproduced in the first issue of Kino1ot
(figure 2). 36 These were his first published collages although
he had probably started to produce such works in 1919 in
37
response to Cubist and Futurist experiments. They were
entitled Volte1ace: Now is the time: The Macaw, If you are
suffering: (Read in full): Danger, and A type of female convict:
(Women stranglers). 38 With the exception of the latter, they
are mostly composed of typographical fragments. The accompanying article, probably written by Gan, emphasized that
these experiments were distinct from those produced by
the German Dadaists who were operating in a society with
which they were at odds and were applying 'the new material
of industrial culture' abstractly, 'for the sake of aesthetic
problems, and for these alone'. In contrast, Russian artists
and especially Rodchenko were working in a proletarian
republic and were not therefore concerned with 'the misty
problems of unhealthy aesthetics', but were 'striving to
comprehend all the potential of the artistic means, and to
make the experimental processes of their creative production
more concrete'. 39 The allusion to the Dadaists suggests that
works such as Dada-merika by George Grosz and John
Heartfield had provided an initial stimulus, but it was dear
that unlike them Rodchenko was trying to understand and
systematize the collage technique and the mechanisms by

which it made its impact on the viewer, and was not just
trying to make sensational and shocking compositions. In
other words, Gan was presenting Rodchenko's explorations

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Figure 2. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Volte-face: Now is the time: The

Macaw, lfyou are suffering: (Read in full): Danger, and A type offemale
convid: (Women stranglers), collages from Kino-jot 1 (August 1922).

295

Downloaded by [Texas A & M International University] at 13:09 16 August 2015

Christina LJdder

Figure 3. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Psychology, photomontage, from

Kino-Jot 3 (September 1922).
of collage as being motivated by the same quasi-scientific
spirit of investigation and spectator manipulation that informed
Vertov's and Kuleshov's cinematic experiments with montage.
At the same time, Gan presented photomontage as the alternative to traditional art and the appropriate art form for the
new society. Rodchenko stressed the significance of photomontage in general, and these compositions in particular,
the following year when he cited them as important examples
of his 'socially conceived artistic work':
A new method of illustration has been introduced, involving
the combination of typographical and photographic material
on a specific theme, which through the richness of the material,
and the clarity and reality of what is reproduced, renders any
kind of 'artistic and graphic illustration' senseless. (See the
images in Kino-Jot, No. 1) 40

The relationship between photomontage and cinematic

montage was further emphasized in the third issue of KinoJot where two of Rodchenko's photomontages were used
to accompany Kuleshov's text on montage. 41 Rodchenko's
complex compositions, combining visual and verbal elements,
were entitled Psychology and The Detective. They seem to have
been based on fllm scenarios; respectively about love and
crime. Psychology (figure 3) presents a tale of emotional and
sexual turmoil: a man and woman embracing represent the
climax, positioned above three images of a couple dancing,
two men captioned 'either or', and a dose up of a woman.
296

The heroine has evidently been trying to decide between

the two men. The words 'gonorrhoeaed' and 'the sacred lie'
positioned either side of the couple at the top destroy any
elevated notion of love that the images might convey. The
way the various elements (both typographical and photographic) are combined produces a narrative that is easily
decipher.1ble by the viewer, while the wording subverts
any tendency towards idealization. The organization of the
different visual components, however, remains rather symmetrical and static. It is, in fact, not unlike a particular type
of lubok, or popular print, used in the early years of the
twentieth century, which suggests that Psychology was one
of Rodchenko 's earliest photomontages. 42
By 1923 Rodchenko was using photomontage in at
least half of his graphic designs. Among his most celebrated
contributions to this field are the illustrations that he created
for Vladimir Maiakovskii's poem About This. Here, he used
photographic images out of their normal contexts. Revelling
in the freedom that Vertov had described so eloquently,
he combined a motley choice of elements at completely
dispar.1te scales and presented them at a variety of unusual
angles in order to create visual equivalents to the emotions
expressed in the poem, such as jealousy. The narrative was
constructed in a way that closely paralleled film montage
theory and practice as developed in earlier compositions such
as Psychology. In one image (see this issue, p. 000) at the top
right Maiakovskii is perched on his stool, the large telephone
receiver and transmitter either side of his head, indicating
the way that it is dominating his thoughts. Above him is the
dinosoaur's head, emphasizing the sense of primitive emotion
and anxiety centred on the telephone. This is elaborated
further by the telegraph lines crossing the diagonally placed
cityscape and the telephone number '67-10'. The destination
of his thoughts is the puzzled housekeeper holding the
telephone at the bottom left-hand comer of the image. The
emotional and anecdotal narratives are clear. Yet the composition is much freer than a work like Psychology, and space
itself is used as a more active and positive ingredient. By
i 924 Rodchenko was also using photomontage in his posters,
appropriately combining stills from Vertov's documentary
Kino-pravda in his design for the film that year. Within
twelve months even conservative critics were praising his
contribution to poster design, claiming that his 'stunning
assemblages of photographs' had 'moved the poster fur ahead'. 43
At this point, the full propaganda potential of photomontage
posters was still to be developed.
Rodchenko's extensive work in photomontage, begun in
1922, can be seen as an obvious point of transition between
his abstract Constructivist experiments and his involvement
in making photographs. He later explained: '1923-1924.
Photomontage brought me to photography. In the first
photos there is a return to abstraction: they are virtually nonobjective. The task of composition was the main priority'. 44
He bought his first camera in 1923-4 and in April 1924 he
took his powerful portrait photographs of Maiakovskii. 45
The following year he started photographing in earnest.
Rodchenko's photographs often seem highly abstract.
His shots of parades, trees, buildings, and other elements of
the everyday world are based on the same eloquent way

Kino{ot and Rodchenko's Move into Photography

Rodchenko's pursuit of unusual viewpoints has affinities

with Vertov's cult of surprising shots. In other ways, too,
Rodchenko's photographic practice can be seen to parallel and
at points emulate Vertov's approach to film. They shared a
commitment to their chosen instrument, the camera, whether
for stills or moving pictures, and systematically explored its
potentiai. 4 R In 1923 in 'Kinoks: A Revolution', published in
Lef, Vertov stressed the creative potential of the film camera:

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The main and essential thing is:

The sensory exploration of the world through film.
We therefore take as the point of departure the use of
the camera as a cinema-eye, more perfect than the human
eye, for the exploration of the chaos of visual phenomena that
fills space. 49
For Vertov, the mechanized eye of the camera, unlike the
human eye, was not limited by time or space, was not
restricted by the position of the human body and as a
machine it could be endlessly perfected. He declared:
I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show
you the world as only I can see it.
Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility,
I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects,
I crawl under, I climb onto them, I move apace with the
muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd,
I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with
an airplane, I plunge and soar together with plunging and
soaring bodies ...
My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of
the world. I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you. 50

Figure 4. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Cover for Novyi Lef9 (1928).

of manipulating space and proportion that he had displayed

in his photomontages, where he had also disregarded perspective and the normal relationships between objects. This is
particularly evident from the series The House on Miasnitskaia
Street of 1925, where the balconies are shot from a multitude
of different angles. One of the most radical re-orientations
of this was a cover for Novyi Lef in 1928 (figure 4) where
the composition was turned on its side, completely confounding the viewer's perception of the structure and its
position in space. It seems that Rodchenko was exploiting
the freedom gained from montage and was now using this
to create a totally different impression of an object and its
relationships to its surroundings. He had consistently stressed
that 'I prefer to see ordinary things in an extraordinary
way'. 46 He later explained:
In photography there are the old points of view, those of a
man standing on the earth looking straight ahead, or as I call
it 'photography from the belly button', with the camera on
the stomach.
I am fighting against this standpoint and shall continue
to do so, as will my comrades, the new photographers.
Photograph from all viewpoints except 'from the belly
button', until they all become acceptable!
The most interesting aspect of contemporaneity is looking
'from below upwards' and 'from above downwards' and we
should work at them. 47

Vertov's description of climbing, crawling, falling, and

plunging vividly evokes the kinds of physical actions that
Rodchenko had himself to undertake in order to obtain
some of the more extraordinary angles on the objects that
he portrayed in his photographs, which he started making
at least twelve months after Vertov's text appeared.
Five years later, in Novyi Lef, Rodchenko justified his
photographic method~ in almost identical terms to those
employed by Vertov. He too stressed that he wanted to
promote a different perception of the world through his
photographs. He explained in relation to his images of glass
jugs which were concerned with 'shooting transparent images
in light' (figure 5):
Experiments of this kind give us the possibility to change the
normal way of seeing the ordinary o~jects surrounding us.
The lens of the camera is the pupil of the eye of cultured
man in socialist society.
Working further, I hope to expand the possibilities of
seeing things.
A crystal vase was placed on glass and above it an electric
lamp, hidden by a dark disk to avoid spoiling the plastic form.
The shot was taken from below through the glass into the light.
In order for this to be comprehensible, it is necessary to
look at the shot from below, raising it above your head parallel
to the ceiling.
In photograph No. 2 a goblet was set on an upturned
jam dish. The light comes from below left through the edge
of the jam dish.
In photograph No. 3 a hanging electric light with a
lampshade, its spread towards the lens, was placed behind a
jug of water. The light source came from behind the base of
the jug's handle. 51
297

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Christina Lodder

Figure 5. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Glass jugs, from Novyi Lef3 (1928).

Like Vertov, Rodchenko embraced the idea of the mobile
viewpoint, the aspiration to embody motion in the image,
and the commitment to exploring the potential role of the
machine in creating such images. In Rodchenko's photographic series, each photograph was like an individual shot
in a film sequence. Rodchenko, like Vertov, moved around
the object, shooting it from a variety of angles. Indeed, in
many ways Rodchenko was undertaking a photographic
equivalent to Vertov's cinematic practice. The images of
glass jugs, trees and houses have an impact when isolated,
but when seen in a sequence they give the viewer a greater
experience of the individual jug, tree or house. They show
the observer different aspects which together produce a
more complete idea of the actual object and convey a more
effective experience of it.
Rodchenko clearly embraced Vertov's belief in the
potential of the camera and its possibilities as a machine to
produce new ways of looking at the world, to create a new
vision of reality, and to enlighten and enrich human vision.
Rodchenko's conception of his role as a photographer
manipulating a camera was akin to the idea that inspired
Vertov's definition of his purpose as a man who both guides
and is guided by the machine he is operating: 'Aiding the
machine-eye is the kinok-pilot, who not only controls the
camera's movements, but entrusts himself to it during experiments in space'. 52 For Vertov, the camera operator is 'the
strategic brain of man directing, observing and gauging'. 53
He stressed that he and his followers were 'the organizers of
visible life' :54
Into the jumble of life resolutely enter:
1. the kino-eye, challenging the human eye's visual
representation of the world and offering its own 'I see' and
2. the kinok-editor, organizing the minutes of the life
structure seen this way for the first time. 55
Like Vertov, Rodchenko was anxious in theory to eradicate
the consciously 'artistic' component in his work and to sub298

ordinate his activity to the dictates of the machine. Yet he

remained acutely aware of the explicitly artistic content of
photography. He wrote:
It is interesting to work in experimental photography . . . but
honesdy speaking, the aesthetic component of photography is
about 900A>.
That is why I simultaneously design a radio - for
the discipline.
There is no more than 1OOA> of art in designing a radio. 56
Rodchenko dearly did not feel that photography and design
were mutually exclusive creative tasks, but presented one as
a corrective for the other. Yet the inescapable implication
of this text is that discipline comes from design, from the
subordination of aesthetics to a specific utilitarian purpose,
answering social, material, and technological requirement~.
By his own avowal, designing helped Rodchenko to keep on
track. Perhaps it helped to keep him true to the Constructivists'
long-term vision. The strategy evolved by Gan with the
support of Rodchenko in 1922 had far-reaching effects; it
produced some fascinating and wonderful photographs, and
when the implementation of the Constructivists' maximum
programme was permanently postponed, those photographic
works become the movement's enduring legacy. Kinojot
inaugurated a compromise, but a positive and fruitful one.
In this respect, Rodchenko and Vertov were in similar
positions. In the final issue of Kinojot Vertov explained that
his filin periodical Kino-pravda represented 'a strategical retreat,
brought on by economic factors'. His ideal was a Kino-gazeta,
or a cinema newspaper, which would produce 'a survey
of the world every few hours'. 57 This was unobtainable and
even the compromise, Kino-pravda, lacked such essentials as
'a regular working staff. provincial correspondents, salaries
for them, means of transport, sufficient film stock, the
practical opportunity for contact with foreign countries'. 58
Like Rodchenko and the Constructivists, Vertov was not
pursuing his maximum plan but following a strategy
towards it.

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Notes
1. 'Programma uchebnoi podgruppy konstruktivistov INKJUKa',
typescript, Moscow 1921, private archive, Moscow; Aleksei Gan,
'Front khudozhestvennogo truda. Materialy k vserossiiskoi konferentsii
levykh v iskusstve. Konstruktivisty. Pervaia programma rabochei gruppy
konstruktivistov', Ermitazh 13 (1922), 3-4; and 'Programme of the
Working Group of Constructivists of lnkhuk', in Selim 0. KhanMagomedov, Rodchenko: The Complete Worle, London: Thames &
Hudson, 1986), 289-90.
2. 'Programme of the Working Group of Constructivists of Inkhuk', in
Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 290.
3. Ibid.
4. AJeksandr Lavrent'ev, 'V. F. Stepanova o rannem konstruktivizme',
Tekhniclreskaia estetika (Trudy VNITE) 21 (1979), 116-7.
5. AJeksei Gao, Konstruktivizm, Tver', 1922; partial translation in Russian
Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Critidsm 1902-1934, ed. and trans.
John E. flowlt, New York: Viking Press 1976, and London: Thames
& Hudson 1988.
6. Kinojot I (25-31 August 1920}, I.
7. Uziga Vertov, 'My. Variant manifesta', Kinojot I (25-31 August
1922), 11-12.
8. Dziga Vertov, 'On i ia', Kinojot 2 (8-15 September 1922), 9-10; and
'Kino-pravda', Kinojot 6 (8 January 1923), 13.
9. Lev Kuleshov, 'l~ku~stvo, <ovremennaia zhizn' i kinematografiia', Kinojot I (21-31 August 1922), 2; 'Amerikanshchina', Kinojot I, 14-15;
'Kamemaia kinematografiia', Kinojot 2 (8-15 September 1922), 3; 'Esli
teper' ... ', Kinojot 3 (19-25 September 1922), 4-5; 'Montazh. Iz
knigi o kinematografti Kuleshova', /(jnojot 3 (1922), 11-12, 'Dom
nenavisti', Kinojot 6 (8 January 1923), 4-5.
10. AJeksei Gao, 'Kinematografi kinematografiia', Kinojot I (25-31 August
1922), I; translation in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds., The Film
Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press 1988, 67-8.
II. Stepanova's drawings are reproduced in Kino-fot 3 (19-25 September
1922), cover, and 2-6.
12. Reproductions of Rodchenko's work appeared in the following issues
of Kinojot: no. I, a painting of 1917, a drawing of 1915 and three
cotlages; no. 2, constructions of 1919 and 1920; no. 3, a drawing for a
building for the Soviet Deputies, and two photomontages; no. 4, a
kiosk design of 1920 and a spatial construction of I 921; no. 5, a design
for a kiosk, two constructions of 1918 and \920, and five graphic
designs for Kino-pravda captions.
13. Translated in Taylor and Christie, The Film Factory, 56.
14. The similarities in approach which underlie this collaboration pre-dated
the publication of Kinojot itself, but the magazine did all it could to
publicize them and bring them to the fore. This may have been
motivated by a desire to persuade the film-makers themselves of the
potential for collaboration with the Constructivists, but it seems far
more likely that it was inspired by the idea of promoting Constructivism
by association with film, which Lenin regarded so highly.
15. Aleksei Gan, 'Kinematografi kinematografiia', Kinojot I (25-31 August
1922), I; translation in Taylor and Christie, The Film Factory, 67-8.
16. Ibid., 67.
17. 'Programme of the Working Group of Constructivists of lnkhuk', in
Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 290.
18. [AJeksandr) Rodchenko, 'Charlo', Kino-fot 3 (1922}, 5-6.
19. Ibid.
20. Kuleshov, 'Amerikanshchina', translation in Ku/eshov on Film: Writings
by Lev Kuleshov, trans. and ed. Ronald Levaco, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London: University of California Press 1974, 129.
21. Ibid., 130.

22. Ibid., 129.

23. This and subsequent information is taken from Ronald Levaco,
'Introduction', in Levaco, Kuleshov on Film, 1-37.
24. Ibid.
25. Dziga Vertov, 'Kinoki. Perevorot', L.ef3 (1923}, 141, translation from
A. Michelwn, ed., Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London: University of California Press 1984, 17-18.
26. Vertov, 'Kinoki. Perevorot', trans. from Michelson, Kino-eye, 17-18.
27. A(leksei) G[an), 'Kino-pravda. Trinad~tyi opyt', Kino-fot 5 (to December
1922), 6-7; Taylor and Christie, The Film Factory, 78.
28. Michelson, Kino-eye, 5.
29. Vertov, 'My. Variant manifesta', in Taylor and Christie, The r;tm
Factory, 69 and 71.
30. Peter Galassi, 'Rodchenko and Photography's Evolution', in Magdalena
Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, and Peter Galassi, Aleksandr Rodchenko,
New York: Museum of Modem Art 1998, 123-4.
31. Reproduced in Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 163.
32. G(an), 'Kino-pravda. Trinadtsatyi opyt', 6-7.
33. Ibid., 6.
34. Ibid., 7.
35. Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 164-5.
36. (Aleksei Gao?], 'Pechamyi material dlia kritiki, smontirovannyi
konstruktivistom Rodchenko', Kinojot I (1922}, 13.
37. KhanMagomedov, Rodchenko, 118-19.
38. Two of these were reproduced by Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 118.
39. Ibid.
40. 'Konstruktivisty', L.ef 1 (March 1923), 252.
41. 'Montazh. lz knigi o kinematografii Kuleshova ', Kinojot 3, 11-12.
42. This obviously ha< important implications for the history of the
emergence of photomontage in Russia in the early 1920s.
zapros nalevo (po povodu stat'i
43. 0. Beskin, 'Otvet napravo t. Pel' she)', Sovetskoe iskusstvo 6 (I 925}, 12.
44. Aleksandr Rodchenko, 'Perestroika khudozhnika', Sovetskoe foto 5-6
(1936), 19, reprinted in AJeksandr Rodchenko, Opyty dlia budushchego.
Dnevniki, stat'i, pi.<'ma, zapiski, Moscow: Grant 1996, 280.
45. Alexander Lavrentiev, Alexander Rodchtnko: Photography 1924-1954,
Edison: Knickerbocker Press I 995, 17-18. See also Aleksandr Rodchenko
'
'Rabota s MaiakoYlikim', in Opyty dlia budushchego, 230-1.
46. Opyty dlia budushchego, 41.
47. AJeksandr Rodchenko, 'Krupnaia bezgramotnost' iii melkaia gadost'?',
Novyi L.ef(l928}, 43. Trans. adapted from John Bowlt, in Christopher
Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modem Era: European Documents at1d
Critical Writings, 1'11J-1940, New York: Metropolitan Museum of
Art/ Aperture 1989, 246.
48. Rodchenko 's systematic approach to exploiting the photographic
possibilities of his instrument and his subject-matter also reflected the
methods that he had developed in his earlier abstract paintings where
he had explored specific pictorial problems, such as the nature of the
line, in a series of works.
49. Dziga Vertov, 'Kinoki. Perevorot', L.ef 3 (1923), 135-43, trans. from
Michelson, Kino-eye, 14-15.
50. Vertov, 'Kinoki. Perevorot', 141; Michelson, Kino-eye, 17-18.
51. Aleksandr Rodchenko, 'K foto v etom nomere', Novyi L4 3 (1928),
28-9.
52. Vertov, '){jnoki. Perc:vorot', 142; Michelson, Kino-eye, I 9.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 143; Michelson, Kino-eye, 21.
55. Ibid.
56. A. R[odchenko], 'Zapisnaia knizhka Lefa', Novyi l46 (1927}, 3.
57. Dziga Vertov, 'Kino-pravda', Kinofot 6 (8January 1923), 13; Michelson,
Kino-eye, 33.
58. Ibid.

299