A range of Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photos, especially portrait shots and self-portraits, are characterized by humor and ironical inversion. This article analyses, beyond laughter, the visual transfer of jokes and the compositional means and photographic techniques: below shot, fragmentation, inclination angle, use of light and shade. Formally, Rodchenko interferes with human physiognomy and transfers distortion and exaggeration typical of drawn caricatures into his portrait- and sports-photography. Here, irony forms a subtext to the heroic low-angle perspective and dissimulates a world of non-freedom. Rodchenko’s parodies and masquerades, which were shot by Varvara Stepanova, reveal the artist’s self-irony and the humoristic symbiosis of the couple. At the same time the seriousness of existence, which dominated the couple’s life in the 1930s and 1940s, is transparent. In conclusion, Rodchenko’s humor and irony are placed into the context of philosophical ethics.