Agitational Photography, 1930–1945: Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun, Suzanne Malherbe, and John Heartfield

Abstract

This dissertation explores how photography was put to work between 1930 and 1945 to agitate against fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. It investigates the material and technical aspects of how John Heartfield (b. Germany, 1891–1968), Lola Álvarez Bravo (b. Mexico, 1903–1993), and the partnership of Claude Cahun (b. France, 1894–1954) and Suzanne Malherbe (b. France, 1892–1972) used photographs to transmit their radical leftist politics. Each chapter examines how a particular body of their work was made. Chapter One discusses Heartfield’s photomontages as photomechanical prints. His creative interventions in the processes of rotogravure and halftone produced montages that critiqued the Nazis, trained viewers to understand photographic manipulation in print media, and encouraged audiences to take up montage and put it to work for the transnational anti-fascist movement. Chapter Two offers the first anti-colonial reading of Cahun and Malherbe’s photographic work. Sharing their Kodak and using commercial photo shops, they made snapshots that critiqued imperial practices of display in Paris and London as they circulated in surrealist and anti-colonial networks. Chapter Three explores Álvarez Bravo’s photographic labor both in her journeys across Mexico and in her domestic spaces. From her kitchen darkroom, Álvarez Bravo anticipated the circulation of her work in print as she created photographs and photomontages that honored the often-overlooked work of sewing, cleaning, and teaching, archived leftist protests, and motivated Mexicans to resist capitalism and fascism.