09.04.2016 – 17:00

USSR as a brand. Study of photo montage in the magazine “USSR on construction site” of 1930’s

Lection, dedicated to the study of photo montage in the magazine “USSR on construction site” of 1930’s, will allow to find new, unexpected superstructures of meaning in such technical method as photo montage, which it does not seem to possess at first sight. Lection will address the period of 20s-30s of XXth century, its socio-political context, where photomontage was born to already a soviet country. On the pages of “USSR on construction site”, photomontage is seen as a visual and social optics on demand. Why, then, constructivists, the ones that came from avant-garde movement, the founders of photomontage in USSR, who met the new soviet reality with enthusiasm, who were later accused of formalism, and suppressed to the suburbs of photographic art and harried by the opponents, were rehabilitated on the pages of a new visual magazine? Who are the constructivists: formalists or brand-managers? What visual images and canons, thematic blocs are actively exploited and drift from one issue to another? Those and other questions will be attempted to be answered at the lection.

Mariya Kotova

is an EHU alumnus (2015), bachelor of media, specialization: visual culture and creative industries. The guide (certificate of the National Agency for Tourism) Interests include: photography and constructivist photography in particular, cinematography, media in tourism sphere, the history of Belarus.