Living during the tumultuous years that followed the First World War, Rodchenko was one of the leading Russian futurists experimented with new forms of expression that echoed the contemporary desire to redefine society – not only as sculptor, painter or designer, but also as photographer. The dramatic social-political upheaval that was triggered by declining monarchies and rising revolutionary movements after 1917 led to a new collective perception of reality. Artists found that it was possible to document these events using photography, which many contemporaries defined as a democratic medium, and which had technologically advanced to become a dynamic tool for recording images. Alexander Rodchenko used his camera to photograph from an unusually oblique bird’s-eye perspective.