Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography - The Hayward, London

Dates: 7 February - 27 April 2008

The Hayward (Gallery)
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX

Nearest Tube Station: Waterloo

Exhibition Website: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts

This is a joint show with Laughing in a Foreign Language (25 January – 13 April) where 30 artists explore humor around the world.

Okay, I'll admit it. I said, "Who?" when I first heard about this exhibition of Alexander Rodchenko's photography. And you too might be thinking, 'I don't know who he is so why should I see this exhibition?' but I can assure you some of his work is instantly recognizable. Just think of the album cover for Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better and you'll actually be looking at an adaptation of Rodchenko's advertising poster for the publishing house Gosizdat, created in 1924 and featuring a portrait of the actress Lilya Brik shouting out the word "books". This is one of the highlights of the exhibition but there are about 120 original prints and photomontages to see as well as poster and magazine designs. The exhibition features about two decades of his work.

Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) is one of the great figures of early 20th-century avant-garde art. In the years following the Russian Revolution he gained an international reputation as a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist but this exhibition looks at his photography. In the early 1920s he decided photography was the medium of the future and he started to document the world around him. He spent the first few years creating collages of text and photos and working from traditional viewpoints but it didn't take him long to realize he saw the world in a different way and he chose to take photographs from unusual angles and found he preferred "from the top down" and "from the bottom up" instead.

Don't expect to see large-scale images as the prints are all at the original size. Instead expect to see lots of images and take time to enjoy them for what they are.

The exhibition is in the Upper Galleries of The Hayward and is a joint show with Laughing in a Foreign Language (25 January – 13 April) where 30 artists explore humor around the world.

The artworks are hung in groups:

• Photomontage where you can see collages of texts, printed papers, and photos.
• Angles - By 1925 Rodchenko moved away from traditional camera viewpoints to consider unusual camera angles.
• Portraits - He enjoyed photographing close friends, especially the actress Lilya Brik who appears in that famous advertising poster, mentioned above.
  The exhibition is littered with quotes from the artist such as, 'Record a person's life not a single "synthetic" portrait, but in a mass of instantaneous shots made at different times and in different conditions.'
• Reportage – Rodchenko's photojournalism which includes photos of Moscow as it was being built following the Russian Revolution and so records a changing city.
• Movement - In the late 1920s the political climate grew hostile towards the avant-garde and by 1933 a permit was required for photography. This restricted Rodchenko's work to parades and sporting events and I particularly like the prints depicting 'Gymnastics in Red Square' from 1936 as it symbolizes the Soviet's obsession with a healthy body. He still managed to see things in a different way and there are some wonderful pictures taken from the top of a high building of a group of people gathering for a demonstration, from a bird's eye view.

The exhibition is backed by Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and owner of Chelsea FC and is part of Russian Act No. 4, a celebration of Russian culture in London from November 2007 until April 2008. The exhibition is presented by The Museum Moscow House of Photography and curated by the Museum's Director, Olga Sviblova.

Rodchenko's advertising, in collaboration with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, were seen across Moscow and the world and his influence can still be felt within graphic design, typography, and advertising.

I feel I've learned loads about Rodchenko from this exhibition and it has interested me enough to want to know more. There are some excellent books available in The Hayward shop if you want to know more too.