contemporary russian art photography || photography in the thaw

Photography in the ThawAuthor(s): Susan Emily ReidSource: Art Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2, Contemporary Russian Art Photography (Summer, 1994),pp. 33-39Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777481 .

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Photography in the Thaw

Susan Emily Reid

n 1961 the president of the USSR Union of Journalists and chief editor of Pravda, Pavel A. Satiukov,

proclaimed:

In our days the role of photojournalism has grown immeasur-

ably. Photography now occupies a place of honor in news-

papers and journals, and we apply new, high standards to

photographs, regarding them as a political document truth-

fully reflecting the life ofourpeople constructing Communism, and at the same time as works of art.1

The renaissance of photography celebrated by Satiukov was

measured against the monotonous and neglected state in

which the medium had languished a decade before. Since

Stalin's death in 1953, reformist critics and artists in all

media had begun to peel away the layers of standardized

solutions that had become identified with Socialist Realism, and to attend to questions of artistic quality, expressive use of

form, and the ability of the work of art to appear sincere and

convincing. Satiukov's dual claim for the photograph as

document-a "truthful reflection of life"-and simul-

taneously as work of art was confirmed in other official

statements at this time concerning the condition and status of

Soviet photography. This paper represents a preliminary attempt to estab-

lish some of the main issues in the Soviet photographic discourse during the period of liberalization known as the

Thaw. I hope thereby to provide a framework for further, more

detailed examinations of photography produced at this time

and of its public uses. How did photography and photographic

theory set about dismantling the legacy of Stalinism? How

was photography positioned as a social practice? How was

Socialist Realism-still the only officially sanctioned

method for all the arts, including photography--reconceived in this period? How did writers on photography substantiate

and mediate between the claims they made for the medium, as simultaneously a truthful document of contemporary life, an expression of an authorial point of view, and a work of art?

The Thaw, the decade from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, during which Nikita Khrushchev presided over a

process of relative liberalization, was a time of optimism and faith in the reformability of the Soviet system. The end of

terror and loosening of censorship made some questioning of

authority and established hierarchies possible. Adopting the

slogan of the "return to Leninist norms," Khrushchev revived

aspects of the Communist vision of the 1920s, including its internationalism, egalitarianism, and the pursuit of

modernity-or "contemporaneity" (sovremennost) in Soviet

parlance. A new Communist Party Program was ratified in 1961.

It proclaimed that the Soviet Union had now entered the

period of the "advanced construction of Communism," and

that the present generation of Soviet citizens would live to see

Communism achieved. Communism, as Khrushchev con-

ceived it, implied scientific and technological progress, an

abundance of consumer goods and a high standard of living for all, and the dissolution of the division between manual

and mental labor. Marx's ideal of the "fully rounded development of the individual" would be attained, in part, through the aesthetic education of the masses and the broadening of

their access to culture, not only as passive consumers but

also as active producers. The renewal of society, modernization, egalitarianism,

the cult of scientific and technological progress, and the new

internationalism of the Thaw created a particularly auspi- cious climate for a rebirth of photography in the Soviet Union.

Photography was promoted as a modern technological me-

dium, as in the 1920s, and was widely used to propagandize the successes of Soviet science, notably the space program. It

was claimed as an international language, comprehensible even to illiterate peoples in the developing countries

emerging-under Soviet tutelage-from beneath the yoke of

imperialism.2 And it was presented as the most popular and

accessible of the arts, an art which was both comprehensible to the masses and an ideal medium through which a worker

could as an amateur actively participate in the production of

culture.3 The increase of photographic "literacy" was identi-

fied with progress itself. 4

Photography was also considered to possess scientific

accuracy or eyewitness authenticity. A concern with "truth,"

counterposed to the "fallacies" of the Stalin cult, charac-

terized the culture of the Thaw as a whole. In literature, for

example, the genre of immediate eyewitness report or jour- nalistic sketch became prominent. Similarly, it was specifi- cally documentary photography or reportage that was privi-

leged during the Thaw.5 However, it was not simply "truth" in the abstract that was sought in a work of art, but the more

personal "sincerity," as opposed to the faceless, hypocritical hackwork of the Stalin period.6 Correspondingly, discussions of the nature of realism placed increasing emphasis on

authorial engagement and the artist's individual, expressive, and persuasive use of the medium.

Photojournalism participated in a general reinvigora-

ART JOURNAL

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34

FIG. 1 V. Smetanina, On the Tribune of the Mausoleum, 1961, black-and- white photograph, published in Sovetskoe Foto 5 (May 19611

tion of the Soviet press during the Thaw, a process which has been attributed to a number of factors. Most important, since editors and writers no longer feared for their lives if they stepped out of line, a broader range of views could now be

published. The status of journalism, including photojournalism, was enhanced, and proposals were made to introduce

regulated pay and work norms for photojournalists.7 Efforts to improve the press and make press photography more

varied, "fresher and more expressive," were prompted by Khrushchev's emphasis on mass participation and the corre-

sponding need to engage readers' interest in current affairs, mobilize, and convince them.8 Improvements in typographic technology allowed more and better-printed photographic illustrations to provide a means for enlivening the printed page, amplifying and furnishing visual corroboration for the text. Izvestiia, the official daily newspaper of the government, and two popular illustrated current affairs magazines, Ogonek and Sovetskii Soiuz, led the way in the late fifties.9 The photographers associated with the flowering of photojournalism, representing a range of stylistic tendencies, included Vsevolod Tarasevich (Ogonek), Aleksandr Ptitsyn (Sovetskii Soiuz), V. Akhlomov (Izvestiia), Mark Redkin (TASS), Dmitrii Baltermants, Aleksei Gostev, Isaak Tunkel, and Maks Alpert.

Following the renewed impetus given to de- Stalinization at the twenty-second Party Congress in 1961, the photographic press discussed with increasing candor the

damage inflicted on photojournalism-as in other spheres of Soviet culture-by the repressive demands of the Stalin period. Stalinist photography was officially condemned by the Union of Journalists for its monotonous rehearsal of standardized formulas, its "inertia of bombast, of frozen monu-

mentality, of shameless performances," its theatrical simula- tion and "embellishment of actuality."'o The ingrained habits which were the legacy of late Stalinist photography- staging, and shooting from eye level, with no attempt to

explore the expressive and emphatic potential of composition, angle, lighting, and focus-were not to be broken quickly. Commentators on photojournalism in 1961-62 re- peatedly voiced concern at the persistence of the unexpres- sive and unoriginal press photography that rendered each issue of a newspaper indistinguishable from the last.11

Nevertheless, an examination of photographs published in magazines such as Ogonek at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s reveals a significant shift away from the dull, stage-managed, and retouched photographs that had been

ubiquitous in the postwar press. Not only were there simply more photographic illustrations but, in certain genres, some

photographers also began to revive the formal adventurous- ness of the late 1920s, exploring the expressive potential of

acute, surprising camera angles, cropping, dynamic rhythms, and dramatic and sometimes defamiliarizing use of

light and shade. However, photographers were reminded, experimentation with the expressive "language" of the me-

dium, the search for harmony or striking devices, must not lapse into formalist, aestheticist ends in themselves. Their function was to increase the effectiveness of the im-

age. Semen Fridliand, head of the photographic department of Ogonek, who in the early thirties had denounced the

experiments of photographers in the October group as "petit- bourgeois aestheticism," now advised photoreporters to pay attention to pictorial form, because dull and repetitive photographs were "deprived of the power of photographic elo-

quence, and therefore of propagandistic, emotional, and aesthetic power to convince."12 "High artistic quality" was

essential, even in photographs for the daily press, to reinforce the faith of the masses in the authenticity of the photograph.'"

Different approaches were considered suitable for different genres of photography. Photographs of prominent public figures were still customarily "shot from the navel," and any effect that might impede immediate recognition was minimized. Khrushchev, addressing meetings or engaging in foreign diplomacy, was invariably positioned in the center of the frame. However, in double portraits of Khrushchev and Yuri Gagarin commemorating the cosmonaut's return from the first manned space flight (fig. 1), Khrushchev allowed the younger man to upstage him, implying a relationship of proud father and son, patron and proteg6. When the leader was

SUMMER 1994



represented in less formal situations, such as the impromptu walkabouts that contributed to his humane and accessible image, there was more room for experiment. Indeed, odd angles, apparently fortuitous compositions, or imperfect lighting bore witness to the unpremeditated nature of the First Secretary's actions and their photographic record. Where oil painting, with its reverent aura and associations of imperial pomp, had been an appropriate medium for the cult of Stalin, the immediacy of photography served well the very different image which Khrushchev cultivated: that of the modern, spontaneous man of the people.

The greatest stylistic diversity and latitude for experimentation were acceptable in the "production" genre. One commentator distinguished between photography in the "classical" or "contemporary style."l4 With regard to painting and graphics the "contemporary style" had already become an established-if controversial-concept. The term had been coined in 1958 to identify the rejection in recent painting of the Stalinist vices of "literariness," naturalism, and unselective attention to detail, in favor of "laconicism, generalization, and expression."l5

What constituted the "contemporary style" in photography? In 1962 the photography critic A. Aleksandrov noted that dynamic, simplified compositions, defamiliarizing angles, stark contrasts, "generalized" (simplified or abstracted) depictions, and reduction of detail of individual objects had become fashionable.16 These characteristics were exemplified in photographs by Vsevolod Tarasevich for Ogonek in the late fifties. Tarasevich employed acute angles of vision and strong tonal contrasts that reduce the motif to an abstract, geometric pattern of lines or shapes. Recognition is further impeded by the suppression of horizons and other orientations. 17

Similarly, in Mark Redkin's photograph of welders at work on vast vats for the newly expanding chemicals industry (published in 1961 in the monthly photography journal Sovetskoe Foto), the provision of specific and legible information is subordinated to an expressive or poetic purpose. Redkin conveys an atmospheric and even mystical image of human industry (fig. 2). The dark figures of the welders, barely recognizable as human beings, are huddled within repeated rings of fire against a predominantly dark ground. The sparks produced by their welding light up beams of smoky air. Thoughts turn to marsh gases, will o' the wisps, and alchemy. Defamiliarizing effects were also employed by Aleksei Gostev in photographs of 1959-61 celebrating the construction of nuclear and hydroelectric power stations.18

Dynamic industrial photography played a vital role in propagandizing the Promethean campaigns of the period, which aimed to harness the elemental power of nature to serve mankind, make the desert flower, and cause cities to rise in the tundra. The Prometheanism of the Seven-Year Plan of the late fifties and early sixties recalled the spirit of optimism in the unlimited power of man to bend nature to his will which

FIG. 2 Mark Redkin, For a Great Chemicals Industry, 1961, black-and-white photograph, published in Sovetskoe Foto 6 (June 19611

had characterized the first Five-Year Plan of 1928-32. So, too, did many photographic representations of the campaign to "fulfill the Seven-Year Plan in Five." Indeed, some of the photographers active around 1960 had contributed to the formation of the visual image of the earlier rapid industrializ- ation drive. Maks Alpert, for example, had begun his career at that time, been a member of ROPF, the Russian Associa- tion of Proletarian Photo-Reporters, and participated in the major photographic exhibition of 1935, "Masters of Soviet Photography."19 In 1961 Alpert produced a series of photographs of the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Sta- tion, which it is instructive to compare with Alexander Rodchenko's photographs on the same theme of electrifica- tion, produced for the illustrated journal Daesh in 1929, to document the first Five-Year Plan. In one of Alpert's series a vast iron crane frames a view of other identical structures receding into the mist (fig. 3). Compositionally it is much more complex than Rodchenko's radically reduced, symmet- rical image of a pylon. With its baroque, off-center position- ing of the towering mass of engineering, its diminutive human figures, and its atmospheric effects, Alpert's photo-

ART JOURNAL



36

9A:bl i-?OMMiI :• ?

A "'-

FI G. 3 Maks Alpert, At Bratsk Hydro- electric Station, 1961, black-and-white photograph, published in Sovetskoe Foto 4 (April 19611

graph is closer to the industrial sublime of the painters of AKhR, the Association of Artists of the Revolution.20

Other photographers, however, began to explore Rodchenko's legacy, neglected throughout the repressive years of the Stalin regime. V. Akhlomov, photocorrespondent for Izvestiia, recorded the construction of "the biggest road

bridge in Europe" across the Volga (fig. 4). He described in Sovetskoe Foto how he suddenly caught sight of a welder

climbing the metal armature: "The figure of the worker

appeared against the light. Against the ground of the bright sky the tracery of the framework was delineated clearly and

rhythmically. What an interesting motif! To emphasize the

height of the construction I take the shot from a low point."21 The result is a grid of dark lines that recalls Rodchenko's Sukov Tower of 1929.22 As in Rodchenko's photograph, the silhouetted grid creates an effective, rhythmic image which, although derived from a specific engineering motif, relies for its impact on its defamiliarization and provides little information about the subject.

From 1957 articles on Rodchenko began to be published, and in 1961 an exhibition of his work was held in the Central House of Literary Workers. In conjunction with the exhibition Rodchenko's contribution to Soviet art and his relevance in the present day were discussed. The poet Semen

Kirsanov, a significant contributor to the literature of dissent

during the Thaw, exclaimed how "contemporary" Rodchenko's photographs looked.23 Their "simplicity and

integrity," puritan lines, and bold juxtapositions were exem-

plary for photographic artists today, who were attempting to shake off the entrenched habits of Stalinist representations. Indeed, they could contribute to a renewal not only of photography itself, but even of painting.24

By the early sixties assertions that photography had now "taken up its rightful place among the arts" and that "no one doubts any more that photography is a fully valid art" had become stock phrases with which to open articles on photography.25 However, these confident and self-congratulatory declarations barely reached the ears of the elitist Soviet art establishment, for they were made in the quite separate context of the profession of journalism. Major publications and events in the photographic world were rarely mentioned in the specialist art press, while it is only since the collapse of the Soviet Union that art museums have begun to recognize the collection and promotion of photography as part of their

responsibility. Complacent in their academic privilege, the

representatives of easel painting could, with impunity, choose to ignore the clamor from a sphere so marginal to their interests.

Even the Party itself neglected to list photography among the arts in the draft for its new Program, in spite of

SUMMER 1994



photography's eminent appropriateness to its current priori- ties. The Photographic Section of the USSR Union of Journal- ists objected to this omission. It proposed that the Party Program should be amended to name photographic art among the other arts listed, considering the important role played by photography "in the ideological and aesthetic education of the

working people, in the propaganda of the achievements of the Soviet land abroad, and in the strengthening of peace and mutual understanding between peoples."26

The art establishment doggedly refused to admit photography into Parnassus for two main reasons. First was the

intransigent elitism of the Stalinist academy. It upheld the traditional hierarchy of the arts, according to which the multifigural easel painting in oil on canvas on a significant public theme was at the top, and the applied arts were at the bottom. Second, in their campaign against Stalinist naturalism in painting, reformist critics construed photography as antithetical to creativity. With Stalin still warm in his mausoleum, the art establishment had quickly begun to distance itself from the practices of the recent past, while leaving the fundamental principles of Socialist Realism unquestioned. Attacks on the art of late Stalinism initially focused on its bombastic or sentimental embellishment of Soviet actuality. But the issue of the expressive use of the medium, which had been condemned as "formalist" since the mid-thirties, was

gradually eased back onto the agenda by reformist critics. By the mid-fifties, these were turning their fire on the narrow

conception of realism as the "depiction of life in the forms of life itself' that had been normative in the repressive years of the late forties and early fifties. Painting had been forced to emulate the optical veracity of the photograph, document, or identity certificate, they complained.27 Late Stalinist painting was guilty of "naturalism," "reflectionism," or "the passive retelling of appearances, excluding creative thinking, selection of the essential, the typical, and most important." These offences were frequently summed up in a single word in the reformist discourse: "photographism." By 1956, fol-

lowing Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, all but the most obstinate Stalinists declared the need for greater "artistic quality, poetry, and pictorial expressiveness" in art, and condemned "photographic" verisimilitude or "superficial copying, flat photographism" as "antiartistic."28

"Photographic," as a pejorative, also denoted the ab- sence of painterly facture or trace of the brush, evident not only in late Stalinist painting, exemplified by Aleksandr Laktionov, but also in a new tendency toward a laconic and expressive graphic style that had emerged in painting at the end of the 1950s. It was the handmade quality of a painting, one critic wrote, that distinguished it from other human activities, including photography, and intimately connected it with the personality of the artist. To deny this was "to identify painting with photography, where, indeed, the filling of the surface with patches of color is, in the end result, mechanical."29

Thus, in the fine-art discourse of de-Stalinization, "photographism" or "photographic" signified the lack of those qualities which distinguished "genuine realist art": the trace of the artist's unique poetic vision or authorial engagement with the subject, and the capacity to move and inspire the

viewer.30 Construed as the antithesis of art, photography itself was only rarely acknowledged by the art establishment to possess the essential capacity to transform and animate the "reflection of reality" through the expression of thought, emotion, and fantasy.31

Institutionally and economically, photography was also set apart from the world of older visual art forms. The professional identity of photographers was inseparable from journalism, and their institutional base was the Photographic Section within the USSR Union of Journalists. The Artists' Union had sections devoted to painting, sculpture, monu- mental and decorative art, theater design, graphics, and criticism-but none for photography. Photography was not included in art exhibitions organized by the Artists' Union or the Academy of Arts. However, separate exhibitions of photography were organized regularly by the Union of Journalists with the assistance of the Ministry of Culture, including the Moscow International Exhibition of Art Photography in Sep-

37

FIG. 4 V. Akhlomov, Armature, 1960, black-and-white photograph, published in Sovetskoe Foto 3 (March 19611

ART JOURNAL



38

tember 1961 (to which Henri Cartier-Bresson was personally invited). Major All-Union photographic exhibitions, entitled "The Seven-Year Plan in Action," were held annually from 1960. As the name indicates, these were conceived as docu- mentation of economic, scientific, and social advances toward the fulfillment of the current production plan. The exhibitors were categorized as "photojournalists" or "amateurs." Similarly, the journal Sovetskoe Foto addressed a dual

readership of professional photojournalists and amateurs. It was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture until 1962, when the Union of Journalists took on full responsibility for its

publication. The marginal status of photography in relation to the

sphere of "high culture" was perpetuated in the education

system. Instruction in photography was restricted to a jour- nalistic, technical, or amateur context. It was not taught in the academies of art, nor were the history and aesthetics of

photography studied within university art-history depart- ments. In the early sixties moves were made to improve the

quality of, and access to, photographic education. Oppor- tunities were expanded for schoolchildren and workers to receive instruction in photography as an extracurricular or leisure pursuit, and in 1960, the Ministry of Enlightenment of the Russian Federation proposed that photography and film

production should be taught in high school as technical

subjects.32 However, as one contributor to Sovetskoe Foto com-

plained in 1962, the textbooks available for teaching photography in schools treated it merely as a sum of technical skills. The aesthetics of photography were entirely neglected. The textbook authors ignored:

photography as an art, as a method for the cognition and

pictorial reflection of actuality. The program suffers from that technicism which reduces the art ofphotography to the craft of copying. Photography must not only be seen as an element of polytechnicization" in education, but must also become one

of the means of aesthetic education of schoolchildren, along with lessons in drawing and singing.33

Photography should not be taught merely as an applied technical subject, its advocates argued in the early sixties. Education in photography was an essential for every cultured person: it could bridge the gap between the sciences and humanities, help develop good taste, and thereby contribute to the formation of the fully rounded human being.34

In their campaign for recognition of photography's rights of citizenship as a fully valid art form, its champions appropriated criteria developed in the 1950s by reformers throughout the Soviet art world. The reformers were con- cerned to define the specialized competencies of different media, or their "specificity." Invoking the "specificity" of each medium, they campaigned on two fronts. First, they reopened investigation of the meaning of formal aspects of a work of art, which had been taboo under Stalin. Second, they

conducted a related campaign to dismantle the academic

hierarchy of genres and media by arguing for a differentiation of the norms and conventions operative in each. This implied, in effect, a challenge to the universal and absolute validity of the norms of academic easel painting, which had been hege- monic for all the visual arts in the forties. 5

In this context, claims that photography was a sover-

eign art form required a demonstration that it had its own

"specificity." At the same time it was necessary to challenge the prejudice that photography could only "mechanically copy" visual appearances, by competing with art on its own

ground and proving that photography, too, could interpret reality. In published discussions in the early 1960s the

specificity of photography was identified with the immediacy of reportage and its documentary visual authenticity (dostovernost). 36 But the "authenticity" of the photograph was conceived in two ways. It was an authentic record of the visual appearance of contemporary achievements and social

processes, and at the same time it was an authentic expression of the artist's vision, mediated by his/her (Party-minded) world view. It was this second type of authenticity--the expressive, partisan nature of the photograph-that confirmed its right to be called creative or artistic within the

system of values established during the Thaw. The Union of Journalists took the line that a photograph

must not pretend to dispassionate observation or "objectiv- ism," but be emotionally engaged and tendentious. 37 Photog- raphy, like other arts, should represent a corner of nature refracted through a personally and sincerely felt ideology. This implied a rejection of the standardized anonymity of late Stalinist photographic representations, which pretended to the status of styleless, unmediated records of truth, but which were widely acknowledged as sophisms from 1956 onward. The union's position reflected both the high value

placed on the expression of a "sincere," personal vision in the culture of the Thaw, and the new importance attributed to the

"Party-mindedness" of Socialist Realism under Khrushchev. These criteria were not in conflict, since the world view that mediated the photographic artist's representations of contem-

porary reality was rhetorically posited as "Party-minded." In

effect, the new line was a reinvigoration of the principles of Socialist Realism, ratified in 1934. Calling for "the true, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development," the doctrine acknowledged no contradiction between cognition and transformation, between the concept of art as empirical "reflection" of a knowable reality, or as imaginative and tendentious projection.

How was the dual authenticity of the photograph signified? Some commentators considered the choice of angle the most important "expressive means of the authorial interpretation of the motif," specific to photography.38 Others attributed a greater role to the construction of the shot in creating a meaningful and convincing image. Originality and surprise were acknowledged as important indications of a fresh and

SUMMER 1994



individual authorial interpretation. Leonid Volkov-Lannit, a

contemporary and sympathizer of Rodchenko, found that

sharp angles and unfamiliar proportions were "sometimes more appropriate than canonical compositions which have turned into cliches." Creative photography, he continued, was unthinkable without overcoming the automation of tech-

nique, without the rejection of schema. 39 It might even entail

breaking the rules of "correct grammar" and departing from established notions of verisimilitude in the interests of ex-

pression, although excessive distortion was not sanctioned.

But, asked one writer rhetorically, "Why is it necessary to depict things other than they look in actuality?"40 If the

expressive use of unusual camera angles, foreshortening, and

lighting conspired to represent familiar objects in ways that

impeded recognition of them, was this still realism? The editorial line of Sovetskoe Foto confirmed that, within limits, it was. The legitimacy of departing from received notions of verisimilitude was implicit in the demand for a creative or

expressive approach to photography. It was the expressive or transformative capacity of art-its non-identity with

"reality"--that made possible its ideological role as the bearer of Party-mindedness. A. Aleksandrov, one of the more

sophisticated photography critics, noted that a certain con-

ventionality or distance from nature (uslovnost) was an essential quality of any art, and had always been present in

photography. But today, he found, photography was becoming more patently nonnaturalistic. Increasingly, photographic artists were destroying the natural balance of light and shade, employing over- or under-exposure, or using such devices as a completely dark ground, which gave the shot an abstracted quality.'41

While the construction of the photographic image was

required to manifest clearly the author's transformative and

expressive intervention, the motif itself must reveal no trace of contrivance or manipulation. The staged or simulated

quality of Stalinist photographs was now condemned along with their naturalism. Instead, the future was seen to lie with an "emphatic naturalness that is, nevertheless, far from naturalism."42 The motif must appear unpremeditated or "found."

Reportage-life caught unawares, as opposed to the artifice of stage-managed tableaux and posed portraits-was reaf- firmed as the primary mode of photography precisely on the grounds of its "authenticity."

The ascendancy of reportage brought its own aesthetic. Imperfect focus, fragmentary composition, or an apparently accidental distribution of light, which might be considered unprofessional in a studio portrait, were not only permissible in reportage shots caught in the heat of the moment, but even desirable. An "apparent external roughness" represented "a kind of hallmark of authenticity. It arouses in us a sense that what is before us is live, trembling, snatched from life." It could create "a unique synthesis of the artistic and the authentic which is characteristic only of the art of photography."43

Notes Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author. Russian names are transliterated according to a modified form of the Library of Congress system. Where initials only are given for the first names this represents Russian practice. 1. P. Satiukov, "Sovetskii fotozhurnalist-pravdivyi letopisets velikoi epokhi, razvedchik budushchego," Sovetskoe Foto (hereafter SF) 1 (January 1961): 1. 2. Arpad Sakashich [Szakasics], "Fotopublitsistiku-na sluzhbu mira i progressa," SF 1 (January 1961): 4-5. 3. A. Aleksandrov, "Iskusstvo shchedroe i trudnoe," SF 12 (December 1961): 4. 4. E. Cheporov, "Shkol'niki ovladevaiut fotografiei," SF 9 (September 1961): 20. 5. Valery Stigneev, "Soviet Artistic Photography," in Joseph Walker, Christopher Ursitti, and Paul McGinniss, eds., Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR, exh. cat. (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1991), 56-58. 6. See Vladimir Pomerantsev, "Ob iskrennosti v literature," Novyi mir 12 (1953): 218-45. 7. I. Fetisov, "Vperedi-mnogo raboty," SF 1 (January 1961): 11. 8. Satiukov, "Sovetskii fotozhurnalist," 1. 9. L. Iushchenko, "Protiv shtampa i ukrashatel'stva," SF 1 (January 1961): 23. 10. M. Bugaeva (president of the Photographic Section of the Union of Journalists and chief editor of Sovetskoe Foto), "Edinym dykhaniem s partiei i narodom," SF 12 (December 1961): 1; and A. Aleksandrov, "Zametki s vystavki," SF 7 (July 1962): 14. 11. S. Fridliand, "Tvorcheskii 'klimat' v redaksii," SF 8 (August 1961): 23. 12. Ibid., 24; and Aleksandr Lavrentiev, "Photo-Dreams of the Avant-Garde," in Photography in Russia, 1840-1940, ed. David Elliott (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 68. 13. L. Volkov-Lannit, "O kompozitsii fotoportreta," SF 5 (May 1962): 25; and Sakashich; "Fotopublitsistiku," 5. 14. Karel Gaiek [Hajek], "Reportazh-eto glavnoe v fotografii, SF 5 (May 1961): 30. 15. N. Dmitrieva, "K voprosu o sovremennom stile v zhivopisi," Tvorchestvo 6 (1958): 9-11. 16. Aleksandrov, "Zametki," 14. 17. Ogonek 22 (May 25, 1958): 3; and Ogonek 47 (November 16, 1958). 18. SF 6 (June 1961): 16; and Ogonek 48 (November 22, 1959): inside cover. 19. Lavrentiev, "Photo-Dreams," 70. 20. Originally published in Daesh' 2 May (1929). 21. V. Akhlomov, "Krupneishii v Evrope. Semiletka v deistvii," SF 3 (March 1961): 6. 22. Originally published in Radioslushatel', 40 (1929). 23. Semen Kirsanov, "Iskusstvo smotret' vpered," SF 2 (February 1962): 25. 24. Ibid. 25. Cheporov, "Shkol'niki," 20. 26. "V chest' XXII s'ezda KPSS," SF 10 (October 1961): 22. 27. "Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s'ezd sovetskikh khudozhnikov," Iskusstvo 3 (1957): 17. 28. See Aleksandr Kamenskii, "Tema i obraz," Iskusstvo 2 (1955): 18; V. Kostin, "O khudozhestvennosti," Iskusstvo 2 (1956): 13-14; F. Shurpin, "Nasushchnye voprosy nashei tvorcheskoi zhizni," Iskusstvo 3 (1956): 4; and V. Zimenko, "Problema spetsifiki zhivopisi," Iskusstvo 3 (1956): 6-7. 29. N. Volkov, "Lakonizm i iazyk zhivopisi," Moskovskii khudozhnik 20-21 (Novem- ber 1960): 5. 30. "Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s'ezd," 10. 31. Zimenko, "Problema," 6-7. See also V. S. Kemenov in Sovetskaia kultura (September 22 and 24, 1960), and the objections by S. Morozov, "Protiv pre- nebrezheniia fotoiskusstvom," SF 5 (May 1961): 36-37. 32. Cheporov, "Shkol'niki," 20. 33. V. Lavrent'ev, "Eshche raz o fotograficheskom obrazovanii, SF 4 (April 1962): 29. "Polytechnicization" refers to Khrushchev's reforms introducing practical work experi- ence into education. 34. Cheporov, "Shkol'niki," 20; and S. Fridliand, "Prizvanie," SF 12 (December 1961): 32. 35. "Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s'ezd," 5-36. 36. Aleksandrov, "Zametki," 16. 37. Vasilii Zakharchenko, "Letopis' veka," SF 10 (October 1961): 3; and Bugaeva, "Edinym," 1-2. Similarly, Satiukov, "Sovetskii fotozhurnalist," 1. 38. Aleksandr Shelenkov, "Tochka s'emki i rakurs, SF 3 (March 1961): 17; and SF 4 (April 1961): 14; and A. Komovskii, "O tochke s'emki," SF 2 (1962): 43-44. 39. Volkov-Lannit, "O kompozitsii," 25. 40. Shelenkov, "Tochka," SF 3 (March 1961): 17. 41. Aleksandrov, "Iskusstvo," 8-9. 42. "Itogi podvedeny," SF 8 (August 1962): 21; and Aleksandrov, "Iskusstvo," 7. 43. Aleksandrov, "Iskusstvo," 13; and idem, "Zametki," 14.

39

SUSAN EMILY REID, lecturer in the history of art at the

University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, writes on Soviet and post-Soviet art and criticism from Khrushchev to the

present.

ART JOURNAL



contemporary russian art photography || photography in the thaw

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