important soviet children's photobook

Vladimir Griuntal (1898-1963) was a Soviet avant-garde photographer and member of the October group. In 1932, he created a puzzle photobook 'What Is This?' together with G. Iablonovskiy. Their close-ups of food and items were printed as clues to math tasks for children and it is regarded as one of the most abstract photo abstract photo-publications of the 1930s.

In the first half of the work, Griuntal's snimki-zagadki [snapshot-puzzles] ask the reader to guess at what is being pictured in black-and-white photographs and, at the same time, to solve a seemingly unrelated arithmetic problem. The answers to these visual and arithmetic puzzles are revealed in the latter half of the book. Objects which initially were shot from unexpected angles or shown in an unrecognisable close-up (such as a tea kettle shot from above) are revealed from a more familiar angle in the second half of the book. Here the photographed object and the solution to the mathematical problem are re-familiarised as a complete picture of a recognisable object from everyday life.

The only text to accompany the maths is '2 x 2 = 4 khoroshaia veshch arifmetika !' which is surely a reference to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground when the narrator says that two times two equals four is a very fine thing.

First edition, oblong 8vo (18 x 25 cm); 32pp., photographic illustrations throughout; original printed wrappers, some repair to spine with Japanese tissue, wappers a little creased, very good copy.