THE COMMISSAR VANISHES

The Commissar Vanishes offers a chilling look at how Joseph Stalin manipulated the science of photography to advance his own politic al 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 Bolshevi ks clustered around Lenin, became, with the aid of the retoucher, an intimate portrait of Lenin and Stalin sitting alone, and then, in a later...[Llegir més]