Alexander Rodchenko b. 1891, St. Petersburg, Russia; d. 1956, Moscow Alexander Rodchenko played a crucial role in nearly all artistic developments within early Soviet Russia, most importantly Constructivism. With his triptych of red, yellow, and blue monochrome canvases of 1921, Rodchenko was declared "the murderer and the suicide" of easel painting; all artists and art production henceforth were to serve politics and society directly. During the 1920s, Rodchenko designed advertisements, film sets, furniture, and numerous book and magazine layouts featuring dynamic, unusually angled photographs and photomontage experiments. Caught like all intellectuals in an increasingly vicious climate of persecution, Rodchenko concentrated from around 1930 on glorifying Stalinist directives, for example in photographs for the magazine SSSR na stroike (Building the USSR). Rodchenko remained an active photographer and designer until his death, frequently in collaboration with his lifelong companion, Varvara Stepanova. Mother (Mat'), 1924 Gelatin-silver print, 9 x 6 1/4 inches (22.9 x 15.9 cm) One of Rodchenko's first photographs, this portrait signifies a revolution on many levels. While his mother holds up one half of a pair of spectacles to help her read (a skill she acquired only at fifty), Rodchenko stands before her testing a recently purchased camera, the monocular medium of the future. Rodchenko famously cropped his negative, cutting out the walls and table to yield a dynamic, close-up view. His mother's face, furrowed in concentration, her work-worn hand, and the kerchief wrapped around her head thereby convey a heroic character without trading in sentimentality. We apprehend the resulting picture, moreover, in much the way that Rodchenko's mother puzzles over her reading. The interaction of hands and lenses has in both cases brought the world radically into focus, magnifying earthshaking changes that, for all their promise of clarity, are still difficult or impossible to comprehend. —Matthew S. Witkovsky