Cameras for Class Struggle

In 1930, Wilhelm Münzenberg—a German Communist Party activist and millionaire media mogul—sent an envoy to New York to set up an office for his pro-Soviet publishing empire. Münzenberg’s most successful newspaper, the weekly Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Worker’s Illustrated Newspaper, or AIZ), had a circulation of around four hundred thousand at the time and a readership of nearly one million. AIZ resembled the other illustrated weeklies that dominated newssta