Monthly Archive: October 1999

Denise Youngblood, The Magic Mirror. Moviemaking in Russia, 1908-1918. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. xvi+185 pp. (paper).

Cinema is indubitably one of the indices by which modernity has come to be measured Apart from being a technical marvel whose very existence is intrinsically associated with the twentieth century, the act of making and watching movies paved the way for a further phenomenon of the modern age: leveling social and cultural boundaries between the “high” and the “low.” Movies not only synthesized elements of high art and popular culture and democratized the space of public entertainment, but also created … Read more

Margarita Tupitsyn, The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Despite the growing literature on early Soviet photography, most studies remain limited to the photographic activity of a few avant-garde artists. This exclusive focus is problematic, as much of the history of Soviet photograph has been treated in terms of conflict between avant-gardists and other practitioners, about whom very little is known. As a result of this simplification, Soviet photographs, publications, exhibitions, and theories have frequently been misinterpreted. Furthermore, most existing scholarship fails to address the broader setting of Soviet photographic practice, in terms of both more … Read more