work, ‘‘Pro Eto’’ (About This), and the art magazine
LEF(Left Front of the Art), which was enormously
influential in the field of visual arts in the 1920s and
1930s. It was only after 1924, when Rodchenko’s
ready-made supply of photographs for photomon-
tages was depleted, that he turned to the camera to
create the ‘‘straight’’ representations himself. In the
1930s, Rodchenko, among others, founded the pho-
tography section of the ‘‘October’’ group, the most
influential group of cinematic and photographic ar-
tists at that time.
In Poland, among those who created Constructi-
vist, leftist-oriented photo montages, heralding a
modern, optimistic civilization, were Mieczyslaw
Szczuka and Teresa Zarnowerowna of theBlok
group and Mieczyslaw Berman, who in the 1930s
found inspiration in works by John Heartfield. The
painter, Karol Hiller (1891–1939), experimented
with numerous photographic and design styles. He
belonged to the Ło ́dz ́group,A.R.,and developed
his own technique, heliographics, in 1928. This
method involves creating abstract compositions
using tempera paints and gouaches on glass plates
or celluloid to create handmade negatives, and then
printing the results on photographic paper. Hiller
based his works on small drawings reminiscent of a
filmstrip in several other conventions ranging from
organic abstraction to the constructivist influences
of the German Bauhaus, which in the late 1930s
became transformed into biological and cosmic
forms. Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, in addi-
tion to their literary interests, made surrealistic
photo montages and abstract photograms for
seven experimental films, includingEuropa(1932),
which has not survived. Themerson was also the
editor of the journal,f.a.(Film artystyczny, [Artis-
tic Film]).
In Hungary, La ́szlo ́ Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946)
was the most influential Constructivist photogra-
pher. Born in Hungary, he moved with his Czech
wife, Lucia Moholy, to Vienna in 1919, where they
collaborated on the periodical,Horizont[Horizon],
and later to Berlin (in 1920), where Moholy-Nagy
was a master at the Bauhaus. They began making
photograms, cameraless images made by placing
objects between a light source and light-sensitive pa-
per. In the early 1920s, Moholy and Moholy-Nagy
met Russian Constructivists such as El Lissitzky and
Gabo, and they continued to formulate and then
practice this movement’s ideology. In the second
part of the decade, La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy emigrated
to the United States and founded the ‘‘New Bau-
haus’’ (later Institute of Design) in Chicago in 1938.
In the Czech Republic, Jan Lauschmann (1901–
1991) was one of the first not only to accept Con-
structivist interest in unusual lighting and perspec-
tive (Castle Staircase, 1927), but also to proclaim
that photography should be seen as an independent
art. He pioneered straight photoprinting instead of
the highly manipulated gum printing techniques
still prevailing in Eastern Europe.
In the Soviet Union, in addition to the works of
Rodchenko and other Constructivist photogra-
phers, experimental art photography was developed
by the Russian Photographic Society, which in 1921
became part of the State Academy of Visual Arts.
The culmination of the Society’s work was the ex-
hibitionSoviet Photography of the Last Ten Years,
held in 1928. This exhibition included 7,000 dis-
plays; the opening night alone attracted 2,000 vi-
sitors. The exhibition was reviewed in many
photographic journals includingPhotograph,Soviet
Photo, as well as the major Soviet newspapers.
However, in 1929, an article in theSoviet Photo
Almanac condemned the ‘‘right sways’’ in the
works presented at this exhibit. These condemna-
tions signified the change of political views on the
arts; the ‘‘right sways’’ referred to art that was pre-
occupied with subjective themes reflecting the indi-
vidual rather than the collective. From the early
1930s, photography in Russia served ideological
purposes, and, consequently, the emphasis was on
documentary rather than art photography.
In Poland, the Atlas Book Dealers (1925–1939)
continued to disseminate ideas of art photography
by publishing photographic postcards by well-known
Polish art photographers. In that period, Polish
photographers participated in international photo-
graphic salons. Moreover, in 1927, theFirst Interna-
tional Photography Salontook place in Warsaw.
In the 1930s, as Communist and socialist ideas
became more prevalent in Poland, pictorialists
turned to street scenes, often depicting the lives of
workers. Even pictorialist propagandists such as
Bulhak took up modernist themes in the 1930s, as
did Romer. Therefore, Polish Pictorialism slowly
adopted some ideas that typified the New Vision
photography then in full bloom in Western Europe.
For Witkacy (Stanislaw Ignacio Witkiewicz)
(1885–1939), outstanding art theorist, playwright,
and painter, photography was a tool that helped to
explore the existential themes of one’s identity. He
turned away from landscape and pictorial photogra-
phy for deeply psychological expressionist portraits
and self-portraits, and he staged Para-Dadaist
scenes. His most unusualw tzw. ciasnym kadrze/
close-ups photographs were taken from 1912
to 1919.
Rodchenko’s approach to photography also
influenced the photojournalism of his time. ForRUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE, PHOTOGRAPHY IN