Picturing the Cosmos

'Kohonen situates artistic representations of the Soviet space age in the context of the changing sensibilities of post-Stalinist culture and the aesthetics of Socialist Realism, revealing how these images brought previously unknown and unimagined cosmic vistas into the Soviet imperial project and allowed for a more nuanced and less triumphant articulation of heroism. She shows how the conquest of space was accomplished with the help of photography and cartography, and how new technology provided access to previously inaccessible landscapes. Following Marshall Berman, who located a key contradiction of high modernism in the fact that technology enables and defines progress, but also has the capacity to destroy it, she helps us understand the contradictory dynamics of a history that celebrated the heroic, otherworldly and extraordinary, at the same time it honoured the commonplace, earthbound, and even quotidian.'

'The radical political and even metaphysical ambitions of the Soviet space effort generated contentious debates in Soviet visual culture between the 1950s and 80s, as is documented by Iina Kohonen in close and loving detail.'

'Kohonen's Picturing the Cosmos: A Visual History of Early Soviet Space Endeavor uses Socialist Realist artwork as well as archival materials from the illustrated magazine ?????? (Ogonyok) to make her arguments. She focuses on the role of cosmic images in the making of propaganda, the construction of modernity, the grounding of political and ideological principles as well as technoutopic imaginaries. However, the bulk of the book - and in my opinion, the most interesting - has to do with how the highly polished media in the Soviet Union constructed idealised heroes out of the cosmonauts.'

'The book examines how visual media served to construct an overarching heroic mythos of the conquering Soviet man, bravely exploring the depths of space, for the glory of the USSR and all mankind, and how that narrative was crafted to emphasize the values that Soviet leaders wanted to instill in their citizenry - while hiding uncomfortable realities and preventing attitudes at odds with the official line.'