Alexander
Rodchenko: Modern Photography, Photomontage and Film
makes it clear that Rodchenko’s contributions to photomontage,
cinema and photography continue to be artistically relevant
through their unique ability to maximize the graphic impact
of all visual experience. Everyday scenes are viewed with dynamic
perspectives and viewpoints that utilize abstraction, not to
suppress the meanings of reality, but rather to instill life
with new possibilities. Original photographic publications and
cinematic montages created with avant-garde artists and literary
figures such as filmmaker Dziga Vertov, share this unprecedented
exploration of graphic design united with form and line. The
exhibition includes portraits of the artist, his wife Varvara
Stepanova, their daughter, leading poet Vladimir Mayakovsky,
critic Osip Brik, Cubist-Futurist painter Liubov Popova and
many others who significantly shaped the history of Modernism.
Most of the work in the exhibition is vintage, with some digital
prints that permit items that would not otherwise be viewable,
such as film stills and pages from publications of which there
is only one vintage copy in the exhibition, to be seen.
The exhibition
is curated by Steven Yates who was the first Senior Fulbright
Scholar to the USSR (1991) and Russia (1995) in the history
of photography. Currently, Yates is Curator of Photography at
the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. He teaches the History
of 19th and 20th Century Photography and Photographic Seminars
at the Art & Art History Departments of the University of
New Mexico.
The exhibition
is organized and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Inc. in
Los Angeles and supported in part by the Leon and Thea Koerner
Foundation.
