The medium for the masses is consciousness through the eyes. Photomontation and optical turn in early Soviet Russia

The seventh book of the Garage.txt series was written by a professor at the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Slavic languages ​​of Princeton University Sergey Ushakin. His study is devoted to the phenomenon of photomontage in early Soviet Russia.
This book is about how photomontage has become one of the most popular genres in the mid-1920s. Having combined the documentary (photographs) and artistry (photomonter), he proposed a new view of reality: a look in which the diverse of things intensified their diverse. Using photomontage as the main example, the book shows how, in the first 15 years after the October Revolution, a new “eye culture” and a new optical regime were formed.
“Photomontation, like any new art, is not accidental. The need for millions of wall newspapers, propaganda boards, covers, etc. Forced tape to become a level with a socialist construction. And then, by virtue of the lag of the old types of art (engravings, drawings, etc), a flexible, mobile, which uses all the technical achievements of photo and printing, the art of photomontage ... Photomontation became a common form of our amateur art, as well as the Rabokor movement. Not beauty, not aesthetic techniques, but determination emanating from political principles, creates a new form of art. ”