Alexander Rodchenko, Stairs,1930
Alexander Rodchenko wanted to change the way people saw society. He was a forerunner of the Russian constructivist movement between the two world wars and helped author “The Constructivist Manifesto.” He used new materials and processes to create a collective social knowledge. He wanted everyone in the Soviet Union to be aware of facts. He made it his business to document the cultural revolution in the 1920’s. He called it “factography” and he used odd camera angles, radical foreshortening, and close ups to make his statements.
The pictures we took emphasized line and shadow. In his work, Stairs, Rodchenko creates a striking photograph using his vantage point. He was above his subject, making stairs into long, dark diagonals. We used the shadows of the railing to achieve a (less dramatic) similar effect. We had some trouble not getting the photographer’s shadow in the frame. If we were to do this again, we could have shot at a different time of day so that the subject’s shadow would be crossing the shadow of the stairs as opposed to going parallell with it.
“One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.” – Alexander Rodchenko
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