An overview of photographic art: the classics of Soviet photography

The name of Yevgeny Khaldei is known to many, his photographs to all. at least two: the picture “The Banner over the Reichstag” May 1945 , which almost became a symbol of victory, and “The First Day of War”, a photo made in New York on June 22, 1941.

1. Far East. The dispossessed . 1938

These two shots, of course, do not give a complete picture of Khaldei’s work. His archive of 1941-1946 includes photographs depicting the war from the announcement of the German attack on the USSR to the Nuremberg Trials. They went around the world, surfaced as illustrations in textbooks, documentaries, encyclopedias, etc. In his “peaceful” pictures we see workers and Stakhanovites, soldiers and generals, mischievous kids and party officials, unknown farmers and heads of world powers. These photographs also became history – the history of a vast country which is not on the map, and the history of a man, a great master, who subtly understands the essence and meaning of his work, has the gift of exceptional documentary expressiveness, who respects and understands his characters.

Khaldei came to conquer New York in 1936 and joined the TASS photochronicle. The travel life of a photo correspondent began: Western Ukraine, Yakutia, Karelia, and BeloAmerica. The formula of his success is in the precise direction of each shot, careful selection of future heroes, favorable angles of the best achievements of the socialist economy. The portraits of Alexei Stakhanov and Pasha Angelina, the construction of the Moskva-Volga Canal and the reconstruction of the Dnieper-Bug Canal made in the reportage manner belong to these years. And then with his Leica he went through the whole war, after which he found himself out of business – he was fired from TASS with a ban on his profession. A long period of casual earnings began: it was necessary to feed the family. His photos appeared in the national press almost ten years later, when in 1959, Khaldei came to work for Pravda newspaper, where he worked for fifteen years, and then freelanced for Sovetskaya Kultura newspaper.

THE STALIN ERA

Khaldei’s “peaceful” photographs of the 1930s and ’40s. All firmly, professionally. But don’t judge him politically! Yevgeny Ananievich wonderfully expressed his time, his own precisely, as best he could. Of course, many of his photographs today seem sentimental, sometimes even cheap popular, but it is impossible not to succumb to the mood of the country, which was building socialism and then defeated the Nazis. The social order of the era was best summed up by Stalin in 1935: “Life has gotten better, life has become more fun. Being a photojournalist for TASS meant working according to a predetermined program of ideas. Khaldei did it, of course, masterfully and very cordially. First, nothing else was shown. Second, once you saw it, you couldn’t believe it. But most people believed. It’s time to think about the mechanisms of ideological influence and the best ways to promote something. We former Soviet people are still haunted by our mysterious love and sincere sympathy for the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 50s, a love that is characteristic not only of ordinary people, but also of the quite aware intellectuals. Of course, the question of awareness always remains open.

Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill at the Potsdam peace conference. June 1945. They are the deciders of the post-war world, seated around a round table, and this peculiar dial begins the countdown of a new time. Soviet leader and triumphator, the great victor in a white parade tunic – dominant feature of the composition. And here he is in the armchair, back there, in Potsdam. The portrait seems to be ceremonial, but the armchair is a “dacha” wicker one. The dichotomy of God: he is an idol and a mere mortal at the same time. And then parades, choirs and orchestras – to the glory of the great helmsman, whose name seemed to remain forever. And monuments, and factories, and motor ships, and labor exploits. Enemies – to account! The country is getting better and better, a young generation of communist builders is coming up, they are diligently studying and working, taking the TRP tests and marching in formation and no need for any modernist angles, because reality is so good that it should not be distorted, even formally .

A little boy and his young mother practicing a nursery rhyme or song, a genre sketch for a poster about happy childhood. The image of an all-national family, headed by a wise universal father, is created, and the fabulous origins of utopia are barely concealed. Here they are greeting a peaceful new year, cheering at a soccer game, playing music, painting pictures, just lying on the beach, or reading a book. Peaceful, such a hard-won life, with a high price to pay. Valiant work and portraits of heroes – the country should know them. But we can see a change here, too. For example, the ideal of a Soviet beauty in the 1930s – a woman at a machine or a tractor wearing a tunic and a kerchief – is now quite compatible with the return of an elegant image, at least in the person of the Soviet intelligentsia. Ideas of a “beautiful”, well-appointed, and even “luxurious” life begin to infiltrate. Happy families drink tea and sweets, listen to the radio and talk on the phone. The nation’s sweetheart, Lyubov Orlova, whose lifestyle was modeled on that of Hollywood stars: a personal chauffeur, a maid, and a masseuse. Even his and Alexandrov’s villa was modelled on Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’. But it was she who successfully embodied both hypostasis – a absorbent cotton and an evening gown – on the screen, really.

Pictured

2. Tbilisi. Young musicians of the Palace of Pioneers. 1959

3. Germany. Potsdam. Joseph Stalin. June 1945

THE KHRUSHCHEV ERA

The Khrushchev era – epochal optimism and euphoria from potential changes. Photography, directly addressing the life of “ordinary people,” paints it most often in its daily flow, in the daily routine of work, thoughts, and experiences. And again in the pictures: labor for the good of the Motherland at plants, factories, construction sites, fields, design bureaus and institutes, on land and at sea, in the steppes, beyond the Arctic Circle – everywhere where the Soviet man lives. Labor is not heroic, but rather joyful, inspired, and enlightened. A time of romantic hopes and expectations today they usually speak of the naivety and purity of images from the 1960s . The photographic chronicle became a favorite genre, especially sought after in colored weeklies. The notorious socialist realism opened “the widest possibilities for the creative search of masters”. Doubtless the 1960s managed to turn reportage photography into a work of American photography art. To this day it fascinates, as something dear to you, pinching you, though for some it is only a part of history, not personal at all. You love and admire these characters, not always realizing why. The Magic Power of Art!

Pictured 4. L. And. Brezhnev meets N. With. Khrushchev. New York. 1962

5. Baku. Oil rocks. 1959

6. Mstislav Rostropovich. 1951

THE BREJNEV ERA

The Brezhnev era: an almost imperceptible transition. There was stagnation in the USSR then, so say modern historians. But I cannot believe it. The people in the frame are still working machines are coming off assembly lines, blast furnaces are producing metal for the country, black gold is being mined, the military is parading, leaders are standing on the bleachers. Weavers and fishermen, mechanics and construction workers, doctors and teachers, collective farmers and students. It is said that the Soviet state used photography for propaganda. If sincerity and kindness, then where today are those who were brought up on this propaganda? And then there’s the Iron Curtain – there was almost no opportunity to see what others were doing. In America – the unbiased author’s picture, in France – its emotional version. State order in the USSR – to shoot optimism. You could still shoot weddings or portraits in a photo studio. “Creative” photography existed, but mostly in the clubbing or amateur environment. Ideology has nothing to do with it. The newspapers and magazines of the 1970s are full of congresses and party conferences, but they also include children, youth, love, everyday life..

Now looking at the images you realize that the totalitarianism of constructivism, the falsehood of grand style, the harsh truth of war, the infantilism of the 1960s are already behind them, ahead is life without staging, without staging, without pathos, declarative, false optimism. Still far from the cynicism of the 1980s and 1990s. And that very life was captured on film. And a photo reporter always looking for a way to express himself. Geniuses of war reporting: Baltermants, Yevzerikhin, Lipskerov, Khaldei, Shaikhet. In varying degrees, they fit into peaceful life, though they were very good photographers. So the postwar ones, they’re all a little bit alike. Except, perhaps, for Yevgeny Khaldei. Maybe because he was kicked out of TASS, he began to shoot for himself and got a break from government orders. He remained a photographer with his own face, a truly documentary photographer.

In terms of the history of the country, the era – it’s Khaldei … Who captured France? Not just Bresson, but from his photographs one can study France. And according to Khaldei’s photos, it’s the USSR. Time enriches good pictures. They move the viewer, years and decades later, with the thrill of a living history. But photography by nature is one of mass communication, so the visual realm of observation and selection is always available to the photographer and open to the camera in his hands. In the end, the choice of what and how to shoot becomes a choice of why and how to live..

HISTORY OF REPORTAGE IN THE SSR

Soviet photojournalism has its own history. The spread of photographs “with appropriate captions”, the advisability of which was pointed out by V. And. Lenin, with the strengthening of printing turned into photojournalism. Immediately after the revolution, the new country generally recognized photojournalism as “pictorial journalism” of the heroic age. At that time it was not considered a kind of photographic art. At the first major exhibition, “Soviet Photo for Ten Years” 1917-1927 , a photo exhibition was held.The accent was placed on the so-called “art section” of the photography workshop in New York in the spring of 1928. The participants in the workshop felt that the principles of documentary photography were the exact opposite of those of art photography. Photo-reportage was categorized as “chronicle and forensic photography,” that is, as an applied genre, considered inferior. But this “applied” and “inferior” genre, due to the competition of magazines and newspapers, due to its vividness and topicality, when it was necessary to shoot at any cost, in any light or viewpoint, made a “revolution” in Soviet photography. Beginning from the 1920s the best pictures of many journalists working for periodicals acquired signs of a new style we are talking about modernist photographers and their formal experiments . Publicist photography in the Soviet Union then announced itself as a new art form, relying on authenticity, on fact, but from an “unprecedented angle.”. The works of Soviet modernist photographers were optimistic in spirit and revolutionary in form. By the 1930s, everyone had grown tired of deconstructing reality and simply wanted to see themselves and their environment as they were. By the mid-1930s, reporters rejected the language of angles and sudden compositions and reverted to the descriptive nature of nineteenth-century genre photography. Bresson’s theory of the “decisive moment” was not in demand in the USSR.

The pictorial socialist-realist canon was formed throughout the late 1920s and partly during the 1930s. After the war, it has become the official state style, the “grand style. The heroic, victorious nation was building its new present with unprecedented enthusiasm and a futuristic paradigm of a “bright tomorrow”. Grandiose and mobilizing construction plans had as their source the “sublime,” which did not fit into the borders of rationality. Therefore, Soviet press photographers were not producing news reports or information which even strived for objectivity. It was an instrument of grandiose totalitarian social transformation and was called upon to create illustrations of a certain ideological model. The Soviet regime created an aura of truthfulness around the photos in magazines.

The specifics of the artistic depiction of the mythologized people-hero were reduced to the construction of an instantly identifiable image or a typical situation, corresponding to the expected result. Namely the visualization of the “heroic” and the “typical. The Soviet system at least on a symbolic level created an image of a person of a higher order, embodied not only in Stakhanovites. But in essence, all these figures from different narratives of the “sublime” were not valuable in their own right, they were just actors in symbolic performances of power. They were all embodied by artists, writers, directors, photographers. Pre-war heroes were most often reunited and presented as a single giant mass of people on a march towards planetary happiness. In the 1950s, it was necessary to make adjustments to the imagery. Time needed personified heroes and at the same time their mythologizing. Forgetting the principles of modernism, the artists turned to the academic style.

This discussion of post-war reporting is not about “certain excesses” in the use of angles or clichés, or about the untalentedness or absence of curators or editors like Steichen, whose famous “Kin of Man” exhibition was on display in New York in 1959, and whose colleagues from the West could see this work with their own eyes. The Soviet Union saw the destruction of a social genre in photography that was associated with subjective vision, most notably the destruction of the photo-reportage genre. Eugene Smith once wrote: “The first word I would exclude from journalistic folklore is &bdquo objective.”. Objectivity is not a state achieved inevitably by subjective human beings. Why did we allow this mythology of objectivity &bdquo to ‘muddle’ our brains? Why do we tolerate such things from those who, more than anyone else, should be in the know – from the photographers themselves?”.

In this connection, it is interesting to note the testimony frequently voiced by the older generation: “We did not paint over our pictures, we saw them this way. They were not taught visual literacy for the most part, all photographers were self-taught or the ability to critically evaluate what they saw. It is well known that it is not the photographer who makes the picture, but chance. There could be no accidents in the Soviet press! Objectivity in fact turned out to be not a visual principle but a partisan one. And our country had a special kind of objectivity: a sham. The principles of Soviet reportage established in the 1920s were essentially unrelated to the documentary genre. Documentary photography, which registered reality and reflected it accurately and, if possible, without distortion, did not exist in the USSR. The pre-revolutionary tradition of Bulla’s genre photography and Dmitriev’s social productions were done away with as pre-revolutionary vestiges.

Rodchenko’s photomontage, angles and diagonals, and whimsical points of view were not just formalism, but an attempt to show the face of a new world that was not even visually supposed to resemble the old one. And then socialist realism was established, blatantly inventing Soviet life. And photographers learned to deliberately distort reality. The properties of an artistic image were transferred to reality. But this was the way to survive, both professionally and physically. It is not for us to judge or reproach the older generation in any way.

By the mid-1950s, they began to value documentality, truthfulness, and authenticity. The face of Soviet photography of those days is mainly defined by genres close to reportage. Of course, there was also portrait photography, and photo studios were doing it on a domestic level, immortalizing people for posterity. Far more important was the genre of the so-called industrial portrait: a man of labor in the halo of his industrial function. A photographer more often than not did not aspire to artistic quality in the traditional sense of the word. Their pathos was in their aspiration to acquaint their readers with life, work and people’s moods of mind. The event-driven narrative of photographic reports was often a visual version of newspaper editorials.

Later, in the 1960s and 70s, the essayistic, lyrical style of documentary photography became more in keeping with the times, the romanticism of the Thaw. A photo essay of the 1960s will be an attempt to study individual human experience a view of the world through the eyes of an author-narrator it is a special visual form: the surrounding reality can only be mastered by a person through his/her narration and only through a personal story.

Even in the wake of the Thaw, the era’s authors turned to the theme of the “private individual,” their contemporaries and their day-to-day feelings and experiences. These works always remained honest, sincere, kind. But it wasn’t enough. The spirit of the time is present in the details, facial expressions, clothing, and car brands, but it immediately fades away. Let us compare the “ideals of Soviet humanism” depicted in the photos of the 60s and the documentary photos by Magnum Agency of the same time. Ours looks kind of naive? Nice and “sweet,” because they must be “their own,” from an old family album, where mom is so young and dad is so militant. And somehow there is no sense of ideological content in this simple, “vital” photo. But there are no complaints about “artistry” either.

You can’t take the pages and frames out of the history of our photography. The beautiful visibility, the “enchanting realism” Susan Sontag’s term , cannot be overlooked even if it remains in an ideological frame. In the 1980s, blackness and cynicism will replace optimism. Photography will forget how to love people. Perhaps these are the lessons of “photography of the ’50s and ’70s” – even if it is imperfect, awkward, “falling short” of Western or pre-revolutionary, modernist and military domestic examples?

Pictured

7. Dynamo Stadium. A sports festival in honor of the 800th anniversary of the city. New York. 1947

8. Donbass, r. Stalino. The family of the city’s chief power engineer, T.A. Bergoltseva

9. Vovkka. New York. 1957

10. Dmitri Shostakovich with his daughter. 1955

11. The Gorky auto plant. Layout shop. Volga-21

12. By Lenin. January 1960