Above: Image altering of Trotsky, done after the famous Russian political opponent of Stalin was mysteriously assisinated in Mexico with an ice axe.

During the Russian purges of the 1930s, it is said that Stalin killed millions of people. But he did not kill them in flesh only. During this time he also ordered censorists to retouch photos, paintings, and posters, to make it seem as though his adversaries never existed. In this 1984-ish way of re-writing history, Stalin was able to give his enemies a “second death.”

Observing these works now, one cannot help but view them as works of art in their own right, where at times the image is photoshopped out with impressive perfection and at others, people’s heads are bizarrely and blatantly black-out beyond recognition like one might do with the photo of a vanquished love or the not-so-well-liked teacher in the school year book.

Links:
Online exhibit from the Newseum
Images and an exerpt from the book The Commissar Vanishes

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See Also: Font Making,Tutorial: Pop Art Photoshop,A New-Fangled Keyboard,

This entry was posted by Jessica Pfund on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.