Original scientific paper
Soviet Agitprop Photopoem: Yuri Rozhkov’s Photomontages to Mayakovsky’s Poem To the Workers of Kursk...
Aleksandar Bošković
; Columbia University, New York
Abstract
The unique series of photomontages for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem To the Workers of Kursk was created by Yuri Nikolaevich Rozhkov in 1924 and was inspired by the avant-garde energy of the poem and the geological discovery of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (KMA), the biggest iron-ore basin in the world. Rozhkov’s photomontages for Mayakovsky’s ode to labor are examples of the intense political propaganda of the reconstruction period of the NEP era (New Economic Policy, 1921–1927), articulated both as the struggle against backwardness and the thirst for technical and industrial modernity. They are also a polemical answer to all those who relentlessly attacked Mayakovsky and criticized the avant-garde art as alien to the masses. The article introduces Rozhkov’s less-known photomontage series as a new model of the avant-garde photopoetry book, which converts itself into an idiosyncratic avant-garde de-mountable memorial to the working class.
Keywords
Vladimir Mayakovsky; The Workers of Kursk; working class; photomontages; Yuri Nikolaevich Rozhkov; political propaganda; NEP era
Hrčak ID:
190758
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2017.
Visits: 861 *