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El Lissitzky. URSS en construcción, nº 5-6, 1938

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“Crucially, the magazine was published primarly during the era when Stalin decreed that Constructivism was a bourgeois art form and that Socialist Realism was to be the only acceptable form of art for Soviet Russia. But one primary medium employed by the Constructivists -the photograph- being essentially a realist, documentary medium, was ideal for the persuasive job required of propaganda. Photography was realistic, believable, malleable. Through photomontage, where images could be reconstructed by cutting and pasting, entirely fictious scenarios could be fabricated, yet even the most fantastic retained the photograph’s single asset -it’s believability.”

Martin Parr, Gerry Badger. The photobook: a history, vol. I. London: Phaidon, 2004 (p. 149)

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