Sawmill Worker

1920–1930

Professor at VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN

For ten years Rodchenko teaches in the woodworking and metalworking faculties (merged into the Dermetfak in 1928), training students to design multifunctional objects for everyday life and public buildings, expressive through construction rather than ornament.

1923–1928

LEF and Novy LEF with Mayakovsky

From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko works closely with Mayakovsky — photographing him several times and designing and laying out LEF and Novy LEF, the Constructivists' publications; many of his photographs serve as their covers.

1928

First accused of formalism

The charge of “formalism” that would dog Rodchenko is first raised in 1928 in the pages of Sovetskoe Foto. By some accounts, that same year he joins the October group.

1928

Polemical articles in Novy LEF

Novy LEF publishes his articles “Gross Illiteracy or Petty Filth?” (No. 6) and “A Warning” (No. 11). In the first, as in the articles “The Paths of Modern Photography” and “Against the Synthetic Portrait, for the Snapshot”, he champions a dynamic, documentary-precise vision and shooting from high and low viewpoints.

18 May 1929 – 7 July 1929

Took part in: Film und Foto

1931

October group show at the House of the Press, and a backlash

At the October group's exhibition at the House of the Press in Moscow, Rodchenko shows “Pioneer Girl”, “Pioneer with a Trumpet” and the series “Vakhtan Sawmill”; the pictures draw devastating criticism and charges of formalism and of refusing to adapt to the tasks of “proletarian photography”. By some accounts, he is expelled from the group in 1931.