Photography and History in the USSR 1920-1940

In connection with North Netherlands / Russia 2013, Noorderlicht Photo Gallery will be showing an exhibition of absolute masterpieces from the Soviet Avant Garde in the 1920s and socialist realism under Stalin in the years thereafter. Together they comprehend the history of Russia from a photographic perspective during one of its most dramatic periods: from avant garde experiments with collage and photomontage to suffocating but unparalleled images for the purposes of propaganda. The works from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI) are unique and never before seen in The Netherlands.

El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, László Moholy-Nagy and Boris Ignatovich are some of the important names that are represented in the exhibition. Supplemented by portraits of the central figures in the Russian Avant Garde, the works tell the story of the unprecedented blossoming in art, music and literature after the Revolution. Artists in Russia and around the world had rallied massively behind the revolutionary ideals, and now, with heart and soul, set about their realization.
The movement’s decline proved to be as dramatic as its rise and bloom. After the death of Lenin in 1924 and the assumption of power by Stalin, the movement faced a very severe reaction which ultimately led to the imposition of a politically sanctioned programme: socialistic realism. By the 1930s it was therefore particularly the massiveness and mechanical noise that accompanied the construction of the military and industrial complex in the Soviet Union that reverberated through photography.