31words apply just as well to the montage of still images on the printed
page or poster. Indeed, Rodchenko extolled much the same approach in
photography. He rejected what he called ‘belly-button shots’ (the waist-
level view offered by the standard use of popular box cameras), favouring
unusual angles. Many images moving around a subject could overcome
the fixed shot, not unlike the concatenation of views and moments in
Cubism. In 1928 he declared: ‘Take photo after photo! Record man not
with a solitary synthesized portrait but with a mass of snapshots taken
at different times and in different conditions.’^12 In theory at least montage
of this kind could mobilize subject and audience at once. Thus in
Constructivism still photos began to look like film frames, while films
were built up with almost still photographic shots.
While the Constructivists explored this intensively, the basic premise
was widespread in the European avant-garde. In his book of portraits
Köpfe des Alltags(Everyday Heads, 1931 ), Helmar Lerski offered several
photographs of each of his sitters, shot from different angles under
different lighting.^13 Lerski had pioneered chiaroscuro techniques in
21 Helmar Lerski, images from the series
Metamorphosis Through Light(1936).