“There's nothing you can do. Help me in (a) what way? You know, save me from what? Protect me from what?”

In the Soviet Union, the realities were of another kind, the revolutionary realities of a new society. For the artist Alexander Rodchenko, this was an opportunity to be embraced. When the Bolshevists came to power, he had declared painting to be dead, and had turned instead to photography. Modern, objective, apparently free from the taint of bourgeois subjectivity, photography showed that artists could play their part in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

“Alexander Rodchenko has his revelation about how the camera is the tool of the new man, the new artist. He invented a kind of special worker's uniform which he wore, and the camera goes with that desire to become the new intellectual, the new artist, serving a larger political reality, serving the people directly.”

But Rodchenko wasn't content with traditional approaches to photography. A new society demanded new ways of seeing. Fortunately, a new means of production had become available: compact, handheld, lightweight cameras like the legendary--Leica.

“In the Soviet Union, the still photographers are using the new Leica camera, and using it with incomparable freedom, with the freedom that, that camera proposed, because it is so light and you can use it to photograph upwards, downwards, sideways, you can, it's suddenly you're freed from the tripod, and you can photograph in any direction. So suddenly social life becomes fluid as it were. It becomes revolutionary.”

“Rodchenko wrote about the need to reject what he called bellybutton photography. He didn't mean photography of bellybuttons but that most as of amateur cameras are held at waist level with the viewfinder where you look down and so the entire world is seen from this view. The alternative to bellybutton photography was to try to make very apparent that you're photographing the world differently, so that the viewer would be encouraged to take part in that sort of revolution of, of perception, literally.”

Vocabulary:

Bolshevist: 1. (n.)布尔什维克主义者 2. (adj.)布尔什维克的主义者的

bourgeois: belonging to or typical of the part of society that is rich, educated, owns land etc.

           中产阶级，中产阶级的，

proletariat: The proletariat is a term used to refer to workers without high status, especially

               industrial workers.

              ...a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

be content with: 满足于

lightweight: Something that is lightweight weighs less than most other things of the

                same type.

                The company manufactures a range of innovative lightweight cycles.

Leica: [摄]莱卡照相机(商标名)

tripod: A tripod is a stand with three legs that is used to support something such as a

         camera or a telescope. 三脚架

but that: 而是

            According to Wang An-yi, a novel is the reflection not of the real life but that of 

            the writer's inner world.

            王安忆认为小说不是现实生活的反映，而是作家个人的心灵世界，它由作家独立创造，是一个

         人的心灵景象。

viewfinder: A viewfinder is a small square of glass in a camera that you look through in

               order to see what you are going to photograph.