Seminar 4 - Modernism

Photography finds a voice.

Gustav Klutsis was one of the many photographers who focused his work on propaganda. Many photographers were taking propaganda photographs around this period.

Alexander Mikhailovich-Rodchenko was a photographer who rejected ‘belly button’ photography, which was taking photos from hip level.

White Army, Black Baron.
“From wild forest to the British seas – Red army is the best!”
This was one of the famous revolutionary marches of the Civil War. They all had the same belief, same direction and same future.

There was a Grand Narrative. They all looked towards a common future.
Everyone was looking towards the eutopia – and ideal world with no manual labour (to some extent). Trying to avoid a dystopia – a hellish and fearful future.

The imagery of propaganda posters was treated like a machine. It was made up of various parts. Raoul Hausmann’s ‘Tatlin at Home’ collage shows how the mind is like a machine being driven by desire.

Wanda Wultz’s ‘Me and Cat’ however shows that we are not completely machine. We evolve from animals and can become animals. It is only culture that stops us.

Sigmund Freud believes that we can never truly find desire, yet desire is the driving force for humans.

Robert Capa’s ‘Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death’ captures a moment in time. Whether it’s a moment of death however is unsure. The man in the image is neither dead nor alive at that exact stage, but he is preserved forever in that photo.