ties behind appearances, mobilizing the visual
machinery of satire, including, as the scholar David
Evans points out, metamorphosis, hybridization,
anthropomorphism, and metaphors of scale. In
Heartfield’s 1932 photomontage The Meaning of
the Hitler Salute, for example, Hitler’s arm does
not thrust vigorously forth, but flops limply back,
palm up, to receive millions of Rentenmarks from
the hand of a giant, bloated capitalist standing
behind him. ‘‘Millions stand behind me,’’ declares
the caption—Hitler’s own proclamation—while
the image reports the true source of Hitler’s elec-
toral support.
In photography, the notion of agitprop contin-
ued to be redefined in the later half of the twen-
tieth century and has become primarily a tactic
within advertising that uses references to the his-
torical practice.
SABINEKriebelSeealso:Heartfield, John; Image Theory: Ideology;
Photography in Europe: Russia and Eastern Europe;
Social Representation; Worker PhotographyFurther Reading
Ades, Dawn.Photomontage. London: Thames and Hudson,
1986.
Buchloh, Benjamin. ‘‘From Faktura to Factography,’’
October30, (1984) 82–119.
Evans, David.John Heartfield, AIZ/VI: 1930-1938. Lon-
don: Kent Fine Art, Inc., 1992.
Evans, David and Sylvia Gohl.Photomontage: a Political
Weapon. London: Gordon Fraser, 1986.
Gaßner, Hubertus, et al.,Gustav Klucis. Stuttgart: Verlag
Gerd Hatje, 1991.
Tupitsyn, Margarita.The Soviet Photograph: 1924–1927.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.MAX ALPERT
Russian
Max Alpert was a leading Soviet photographer
who helped shaped the modern photo essay
through his work as a propagandist of the Soviet
state in the 1930s through the 1950s. His documen-
tations of huge state-sponsored projects form a
lasting record of Soviet industry and ideology.
Although always under the direction of the state
to photograph the properly sanctioned material,
Alpert brought a stark artistry to all his work,
enabling it to survive while much Socialist Realist
and propaganda photography has not.
Alpert was born in 1899 in Simferopol in the
Crimea (present-day Ukraine). The son of an arti-
san, at age 15 he was apprenticed to a photogra-
pher in Odessa. In 1919 Alpert volunteered for the
Red Army. During the 1920s he became a leader
of the Red Army’s photographic brigade alongside
such young photographers as Yevgeny Khaldei.
After his demobilization in 1924 he joined the
Moscow newspaperRabochaya Gazeta where he
worked for four years. Many of his photographs
from this period, includingMaxim Gorky’s Return
from Italy, were widely published.
Hired by Soviet organPravdain 1928 he photo-
graphed the collectivization of agriculture and con-
struction during the first of Premier Josef Stalin’s now
infamous Five Year Plans. As part of his coverage of
these projects he began to work systematically on
developing serial or sequence photography. An im-
portant early example includes his seriesThe Con-
struction of the Magnitogorsk Steelworks Factoryof
1929–1930. Over the years Alpert made repeated vis-
its to the town to document its ongoing development.
Among his most noted works was the sequenceMas-
ter and Builderin which Alpert chronicled the career
of Viktor Kalmikov, a worker at the Magnitogorsk
steel foundry who began as an illiterate mason and
became an expert construction worker.
In 1931 Alpert began photographing for the
magazineUSSR na stroike(USSR in Construction)
contributing to stories directed at foreign audi-
ences. During this time he covered the digging of
the Fergana Canal (also known as the Great or
Grand Fergana Canal), to draw water for irrigationAGITPROP