George Petrusov / Retrospective

Alex Lachmann and Moscow House of photography collection

George Petrusov

A photogapher of the first five-year plan and a colleague of Alexander Rodchenko and Sergei Eisenstein, George Petrusov recorded a world that was just beginning to emerge. Chasing around the country to capture the dynamics of the socialist construction site or clearing the grand Soviet ballet, he created a myth of a happy life in which he himself firmly believed.

«He’s like a sponge that absorbs everything about photography», Rodchenko said of Petrusov. Raised on the movement of constructivism, Petrusov was always willing to use the entire arsenal of techniques of the era, borrowing pictorialism, expressionism, and monumental realism. Unafraid of change, he went from the role of a demiurge, directly creating the latest historical record, to an observer, reflecting the external magnificence of public monuments. From the grand picture stories for the magazine USSR in Construction, to surreal images of the war, to his final «ballet period», he was always willing to reconsider his own position in the search of a better image.