Circulating Photomontage: The Appropriation of Soviet Visual Material by French Communist Networks, 1928–1936

Intended to promote the success of rapid industrialisation, especially at the time of the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32), Soviet photography was disseminated to other countries through the networks of the Communist International. The circulation of Soviet photographs in the press helped define a specifically communist visual culture, characterised by idiosyncratic visual tropes and graphic treatment of images through photomontage and dynamic page layout. This article highlights the role of graphic designers and illustrators in the development of political photomontage in France, particularly through periodicals associated with the Communist Party such as Regards and the Almanach ouvrier et paysan. These illustrated publications often borrowed their iconography and innovative page layout directly from Soviet magazines such as USSR in Construction. By showing how images have been appropriated and transformed, I suggest that communist editors in the early 1930s encouraged a type of militant participation that challenged individual authorship.