The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia New Edition - Softcover

David King

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849762511 ISBN 13: 9781849762519

Publisher: Tate Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

The Commissar Vanishes offers a chilling look at how 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. For example, a 1919 photograph showing a large crowd of Bolsheviks clustered around Lenin, 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. In each case, the juxtaposition of the original and the doctored images yields a fascinating - and often terrifying and tragic - insight into one of the darkest chapters of modern history.

About this title

Review:

Rarely if ever has what George Orwell called the memory hole received the kind of stunning real-life elaboration it gets in The Commissar Vanishes. This lush volume is a fascinating and sobering study of the rewriting of history. Richard Bernstein, --New York Times

King has scored a striking success.... Overwhelmingly instructive. Robert Conquest, --Los Angeles Times Book Review

Unforgettable. --The Guardian

About the Author:

During the past three decades, author and photo-historian David King has assembled the world’s largest archive of doctored photographs, posters, and painting from the Soviet era. King began his collection during a trip to Russia in 1970, when he discovered that thousands of images of Stalin’s victims had been lost to posterity—either by design or neglect. His collection has grown to more than a quarter million images, the best of which have been selected for The Commissar Vanishes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tate Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1849762511
• ISBN 13: 9781849762519
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192