The Jewish Museum in New York City is currently mounting an exhibit entitled The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Films. In her review, Frances Brent notes that the exhibit—although in many ways well executed—does not properly draw attention to the outsized role Jews played in early Soviet photography, or the Jewish identities of most of the artists whose work is on display:
[Take, for instance], El Lissitzky, whose experiments with photographs and mastery of photomontage grew out of the Jewish and Russian avant-garde. Lissitzky was a protean talent, and there were many iterations to his career. As a teenager he studied painting in Vitebsk with [Marc] Chagall’s teacher Yehudah Pen. He trained in Germany and later Moscow as an architect before taking part in Jewish ethnographic expeditions. He illustrated both Russian and Yiddish books—most famously Ḥad gadya, [an illustrated version of the traditional Passover song]. Under the influence of [Kazimir] Malevich he became a Suprematist and, after that, a constructivist in Moscow. From 1921 to 1925 he lived in Germany and Switzerland and experimented with printmaking, typography, and book design, adding the new techniques of photo-collage and photomontage to his repertoire.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/195294/soviet-photography-jewish-museum