Re: [Leica] Rodchenko portrait

[Guy Bennett <gbennett@lainet.com>]

Gerry,

Regina Lemberg was Rodchenko's student; he taught her photography. He
himself began to take pictures in 1924, initially to produce material for
the photocollages he was making at the time (and the most famous of which
are those appearing in Mayakovsky's "Pro Eto" ["About This"], a book of
poems about the poet's affair with Lilya Brik, wife of Formalist Osip Brik,
with whom Mayakovsky was living in a ménage à trois.)

Anyway, to come back to Rodchenko and photography, early photographs show
him with what I imagine was a Leica I (A). According to Sartorius, these
were made between 1925 and 1932, and mounted with a non-interchangeable 50
lens, at first an Anastigmat 50/3.5, then an Elmax 50/3.5, an Elmar 50/3.5
and finally, in '31 and '32, with a Hektor 50/2.5. As a matter of fact, the
camera in the Lemberg portrait may well have been Rodchenko's, at least, it
is the same as the one he was then using, as one can see in many pictures
of him with his camera.

There was recently published a monograph of Rodchenko's photographic work.
It's a big, beautiful book with superb reproductions and texts. For the
photographically-historical minded, there is a decent selection of
Rodchenko's essays and manifesto-like texts about photography in
"Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings,
1913-1940" (Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989).

Guy


>I thought those with a more historical (not hysterical) bent my care to look
>at:
>
>http://www.photographer.ru/show.htm?language=1&gallery=37&pic=8
>
>where there is a 1920's portrait by the Russian photographer Rodchenko, and
>the sitter is using what looks like a Leica 1 with a collapsible Summicron on
>a tripod. This combination must have been very new at that date.
>
>Gerry