An edition of The commissar vanishes (1997)

The commissar vanishes

the falsification of photographs and art in Stalin's Russia : photographs from the David King Collection

  • 0 Ratings
  • 6 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 1 Have read

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

Check-In

×Close
Add an optional check-in date. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals.
Today

  • 0 Ratings
  • 6 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 1 Have read

Buy this book

Last edited by MARC Bot
July 11, 2024 | History
An edition of The commissar vanishes (1997)

The commissar vanishes

the falsification of photographs and art in Stalin's Russia : photographs from the David King Collection

  • 0 Ratings
  • 6 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 1 Have read

The Commissar Vanishes offers a chilling look at how one man - Joseph Stalin - manipulated the science of photography to advance his own political career and to erase the memory of his victims. On Stalin's orders, purged rivals were airbrushed from group portraits, and crowd scenes were altered to depict even greater legions of the faithful. In one famous image, several Party members disappeared from an official photograph, to be replaced by a sylvan glade.

For the past three decades, author and photohistorian David King has assembled the world's largest archive of photographs, posters, and paintings from the Soviet era. His collection has grown to more than a quarter of a million images, the best of which have been selected for The Commissar Vanishes.

The efforts of the Kremlin airbrushers were often unintentionally hilarious. A 1919 photograph showing a large crowd of Bolsheviks clustered around Lenin, for example, became, with the aid of the retoucher, an intimate portrait of Lenin and Stalin sitting alone, and then, in a later version, of Stalin by himself.

The Commissar Vanishes is nothing less than the history of the Soviet Union, as retold through falsified images, many of them published here for the first time outside Russia. In each case, the juxtaposition of the original and the doctored images yields a terrifying - and often tragically funny - insight into one of the darkest chapters of modern history.

Publish Date
Publisher
Metropolitan Books
Language
English
Pages
192

Buy this book

Previews available in: English

Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 190) and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
303.3/76
Library of Congress
TR85, TR85 .K55 1997, TR85.K55 1997

The Physical Object

Pagination
192 p. :
Number of pages
192

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL22308593M
Internet Archive
commissarvanishe0000king
ISBN 10
0805052941
LCCN
97020832
OCLC/WorldCat
222514463
Library Thing
8309997
Goodreads
1606154

Community Reviews (0)

Feedback?
No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
July 11, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
July 31, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 28, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
May 19, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 10, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page