Kalandiia, N. K., photomontages.

[PHOTOMONTAGE ALBUM – UKRAINE TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERS] II Vypusk Khar’kovskogo Instituta Inzhenerov Transporta [Second Graduating Class of the Kharkiv Institute of Transportation Engineers].

Kharkiv: Khark. Foto Kombinat UFO, 1932. Oblong quarto (24 × 30.5 cm). Original embossed brown suede over thick boards; twenty leaves of thick card stock with 38 vintage gelatin silver prints mounted to rectos and versos (onto lighter paper). Boards lightly rubbed; spine shaken; still about very good. Item #55515

A one-of-a-kind yearbook designed for the railway engineer N. K. Kalandiia, a graduate of the newly created Kharkiv Institute of Transportation Engineers (today Ukrainian State University of Railway Transport), with the photomontage compositions inside the album created by Kalandiia himself. The Institute was founded in 1930, with 432 students in 12 different faculties as well as a graduate school starting in the first year, to meet the urgent need for transportation engineers and railway professionals during the first five-year plan. Twelve different group compositions in the album with one professor and 5-6 students each appear throughout the album, probably corresponding to graduate students of the twelve different faculties, which are not labeled, with the photomontages in the background providing some clues to the type of faculty (chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, railway design). The yearbook album was likely made to order by Kalandiia whose individual portrait appears several times in the opening leaves of the album, as well as part of a group composition, likely a bridge design faculty, with numerous bridges and Constructivist buildings in the photomontage background. One of the group compositions features the words "USSR in construction" and below it: "Here they caught up with America" ("Zdes' dognali Ameriku"). Nothing is known of Kalandiia, whose clear interest in constructivism and photomontage is another clue to his likely specialization in design.

The opening leaves of the album contain photo-compositions with portraits of educational administrators and political leaders of Ukraine, many of whom were later repressed on national grounds, such as the People’s Commissar of Education of the USSR Mykola Skrypnyk (1872–1933); the representative of the People’s Commissariat of Transport Oleksandr Serbichenko (1890–1937); Education Deputy of the USSR Vladimir Zembitski (1891–1938); People's Commissariat of Justice Semen Prigov (1889–1938), among others. Some of the graduates pictured in the album, who came to hold higher positions after graduation, also fell victim to the purges, such as the Head of Locomotive Operations of the Kazan Railway Vasilii Gontarenko (1895–1938) and Head of the Railcar Repair Plant in Baku Grigorii Zubiev (1903–1937). Noting especially the repressions among Ukrainian engineers and those holding high administrative positions in Eastern Ukraine and the Donbass region, historian Vladimir Nikolskii writes: “The mass arrests of skilled workers and engineers in industry caused significant material damage to the functioning and development of the country's largest industrial region as a whole and its leading industries: coal, metallurgy, machine building, chemicals, rail transport, communications, and construction. It is impossible to calculate the damage caused” (See: Politicheskiie repressii 1937–1938 gg. na Donetchine v kolichestvennykh izmereniiakh, p. 80). While made-to-order graduation yearbooks were a common genre in this period, this album is unique both for containing the photomontage compositions created by the owner of the album, as well as for becoming a kind of necrology for many of his superiors and colleagues who were subsequently repressed.

Price: €2,000.00

other currencies