El LISSITZKY

SSSR na stroyke. [USSR In Construction].  No 2-3, 1940.  [36] pp.  Illustrated throughout with photographs and photomontage.  Folio, 420 x 295 mm, bound in publisher’s wrappers illustrated with a photomontage by Lissitzky.  Moscow: State Publishing Union of the RSFR, 1940.

Russian Edition.  A scarce issue of this long running Soviet periodical with a striking cover by El Lissitzky.  The subject of the issue is Western Ukraine and Belarus with the cover showing a citizen in a loving embrace with a Red Army soldier deployed to protect them from the invading Nazis.    

As Martin Parr says "from 1930-1940 URSS en Construction employed the best Soviet photo-journalists and graphic designers. Amongst the photographers were Max Alpert, Arkadi Shaikhet, Georgi Zeima, Boris Ignatovich, Semen Fridland and Georgi Shaikhet. Designers included Nikolai Troshin, El Lissitzky, Sophie Kueppers, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. All the visual strategies of the propaganda photobooks, designed by Lissitzky, Rodchenko and others -- the elaborate photomontages, innovative photography, fold-out pages, transparent overlays and so on -- were developed in URSS en Construction, one of the most beautifully produced magazines of the twentieth century.”

Pin holes on the edge of the cover from having been previously bound, some staining, still a good copy of this most unusual issue. 

Parr and Badger, The Photobook I, 148-149