The Soviet government, however, was an enthu-
siastic supporter of the work from the beginning,
primarily because it was intended for a European
audience. The government held great expectations
for the project as an opportunity to communicate
important information about the lives of workers
under Communism. In this it would fulfill an impor-
tant propaganda role. Shaikhet was a prominent
member of the Union of Russian Proletarian Photo-
graphers (ROPF) and as such was in the position to
be on the correct side of the schism that happened in
Soviet photography in the 1930s. While his col-
leagues, including Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich,
and Elizar Langman, who were associated with what
was coming to be perceived as avant-garde or formal-
ist tendencies began to be denounced, Shaikhet’s style
came to exemplify official Soviet photography.
Shaikhet was a leading voice in the debate. A
statement by ROPF members inProletarian Photo
in 1931 condemned the photographers associated
with the October Union for following a model of
Western photography, which followed a position
put forward by Shaikhet as early as 1929 in his
article ‘‘The Competition of the Photojournalists
Unfolds.’’ In this article, Shaikhet argued that the
October approach to photography was an inappro-
priate model for the Soviet press, declaring that
‘‘editors approve of photographs in which all events
are fitted into absolutely concrete and intelligible
forms for the reader’’ (quoted in Tupitsyn, 1996).
By 1930, this position had garnered official sup-
port. In 1931, the Central Committee of the Prole-
tarian Cinematographers and Photographers lauded
the photographic approach offered inTwenty-Four
Hours in the Life of the Filippov Familyas the model
for the proletarianization of Soviet photography.
The Central Committee’s statement declared that
the images in the series presented a ‘‘bright realist
documentary representation of the class truth of our
reality [plus] the ability to expose the class essence of
the events’’ (quoted in Tupitsyn, 1996). This made
explicit official support for the methods and theories
of ROPF photographers as opposed to the October
Association photographers.
In the Soviet press, Shaikhet’s photos increas-
ingly were presented as ideal types against which
the works of the October photographers, especially
Rodchenko, were unfavorably compared. As one
example, a distinction was demonstrated by com-
paring two images of street paving during the first
Five Year Plan. In Shaikhet’s 1931 work, The
Steamroller, the photographer offers a straightfor-
ward presentation of labor from a conventional
perspective. This contrasts with Rodchenko’s
photograph of the same subject from his series
Paving Streets: Leningradskoe Highway, 1929,in
which the horizon is eliminated and the body of
the machine is truncated. Shaikhet attempts to
capture the completeness of the paving process in
one work while Rodchenko presents a series of
fragments to reveal the operation of the productive
components of the machinery. Where Shaikhet’s
work attempts an intelligible and naturalistic pre-
sentation, Rodchenko’s depictions disorient the
viewer by offering a montage of parts rather than
shaping a whole.
Shaikhet’s work was displayed at theExhibition of
Works by the Masters of Soviet Photo Artin 1935,
the last exhibition to include avant-garde photogra-
phy at the onset of socialist realism. He also exhib-
ited in the First All-Union Exhibition of Photo Art
at the State Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1937.
This exhibit signified the final chapter in post-revo-
lution Soviet innovative photography. On the whole,
however, his images were produced not for galleries
or museums but for a broad audience. Indeed, most
of Shaikhet’s wartime photos, taken during his time
on the frontlines as a war correspondent, were never
shown in galleries. He died in 1959.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, Shaikhet, along
with the entire field of Socialist photography, is
being reevaluated by both Western and Russian
scholars. Lauded as ‘‘a founding father of Soviet
newsline photography’’ in the press release for an
exhibition of his work at the Russian State Mus-
eum, Moscow in 2001, Shaikhet’s contributions,
like that of many of his countrymen, have yet to
be thoroughly accessed.
JeffreyShantzSeealso:Agitprop; Alpert, Max; Photography in
Russia and Eastern Europe; Propaganda; Socialist
Photography; Worker PhotographyBiography
Born Arkadii Samoilovich Shaikhet in Nikolayev in 1898.
Moved to Moscow, employed as retoucher and portrait
photographer, 1918. Photojournalist for the popular pub-
licationsRobochaya GazetaandOgonyok, 1924 onwards;
regular contributor toUSSR na stroike (USSR in Con-
struction), 1930s. Contributor to the influential project
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of the Filippov Family,- War correspondent, Great Patriotic War (World
War II). Shaikhet was a founding member and leading
figure in the Union of Russian Proletarian Photographers,
ROPF. Died in 1959.
Individual Exhibitions
2001 Arkady Shaikhet: Photographs 1924–51; Moscow State
Museum; Moscow, RussiaSHAIKHET, ARKADII