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Sovfoto 20/20

N. Karavayev, Great Physiologist, December, 1951, gelatin silver print. Collection of the MacLaren Art Centre. Anonymous gift, 2001

2020, and its consonance with 20/20 vision, has long been a date that’s tied with futurity. Sovfoto 20/20 highlights the aesthetics of innovation as a means of demonstrating how artists and designers can be architects of the future. The photographs are from the Sovfoto Archive, a collection of 23,116 Soviet press prints from the Stalinist era. Inherently flawed as historical documents, these images nonetheless reveal how the future is continuously reimagined in the present moment.

2020, and its consonance with 20/20 vision, has long been a date that’s tied with futurity. Sovfoto 20/20 highlights the aesthetics of innovation as a means of demonstrating how artists and designers can be architects of the future. The photographs are from the Sovfoto Archive, a collection of 23,116 Soviet press prints from the Stalinist era. Inherently flawed as historical documents, these images nonetheless reveal how the future is continuously reimagined in the present moment.