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Author Topic:   Picturing the Cosmos (Iina Kohonen)
cspg
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Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006

posted 08-26-2016 01:58 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Picturing the Cosmos: A Visual History of Early Soviet Space Endeavour
by Iina Kohonen
Picturing the Cosmos elucidates the complex relationship between visual propaganda and censorship in the Soviet Union in the Cold War period, focusing on the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing from a comprehensive corpus of rarely seen photographs and other visual phenomena narrating the Soviet Union's 1957 victory in the 'Race for Space', the author illustrates the media's role in cementing the way for Communism whilst retaining top-secret information. Each photo is examined as a deliberate, functioning part of a specific political, ideological and historical situation that helped to anchor the otherwise abstract political and intellectual concepts of the future and modernization.

Space, the ultimate canvas for the imagination, provided the Soviet Union with a blank page to etch upon its narrative of conquest, exploration and celebrated cosmo-heroes. Through mapping and naming the cosmos became part of the Soviet territory, and the visual media brought this new territory and its heroes into the daily lives of its citizens. Across the 1960s, the author identifies a clear decline in these possessive themes in the cosmic depictions, becoming increasingly replaced with more earthbound and commonplace subject matters.The cosmonauts were transformed into prototypes of the perfect Communist man, representing modernity, good taste and the aesthetics of the everyday.

Across five visually stimulating chapters, the book navigates and critically examines these utopian yet earthbound narratives, highlighting the rhetorical tension between propaganda and censorship, art and politics. As space historian Slava Gerovitch has noted: 'bound by secrecy on one side and propaganda demands on the other, Soviet-era space history was reduced to a set of clichés: flawless cosmonauts flew perfect missions, supported by unfailing technology'.

(Draft summary of the book courtesy of the publisher.)

  • Paperback: 132 pages
  • Intellect Ltd (May 15, 2017)
  • ISBN-10: 1783207426
  • ISBN-13: 978-1783207428

mode1charlie
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From: Honolulu, HI
Registered: Sep 2010

posted 08-26-2016 03:27 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for mode1charlie   Click Here to Email mode1charlie     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Sounds interesting.

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