Group Exhibitions
1935 Masters of Soviet Artistic Photography; Moscow,
Soviet Union
Selected Works
Tillage, hamlet of Kolomenskoye, 1927
To the Construction of the Capital, 1927
Horse Courtyard in Nignii Novgorod, 1927
Skiers, 1929
Village Construction, 1930
Kolkhoz Field, 1931
The Steamroller, 1931
Fisherman, Caspian Sea, 1932
Komsomol Youth at the Wheel, 1936
Children Gathering for the XIXth Anniversary of the October
Revolution, 1936
Field Lighting, Moscow Region, 1936
They Come to Know Grief, c. 1944
Automobile Factory, 1947
Further Reading
Bakshtein, J. 1994. ‘‘Russian Photography and its Con-
texts.’’Art Journal53: 43–44.
Carlisle, Olga. 1989. ‘‘The Aperture of Memory.’’Aperture
116: 40–45.
Eerikainen, Hannu. 1989. ‘‘Up from Underground.’’Aper-
ture116: 56–67.
Mihailovic, Alexandar. ‘‘Armed only with a Camera: An
Interview with Dmitri Baltermants.’’ Aperture 116
(1989): 2–6.
Mrazkova, Daniela. ‘‘Many Nations, Many Voices.’’Aper-
ture116 (1989): 24–33.
Reid, Susan. ‘‘Photography in the Thaw.’’Art Journal 53
(1994): 33–39.
Sartorti, Rosalinde. ‘‘No More Heroic Tractors: Subverting
the Legacy of Socialist Realism.’’Aperture116 (1989): 8–
16.
Shudakov, Grigori.20 Soviet Photographers, 1917–1940.
Amsterdam: Fiolet and Draaijer Interphoto, 1990.
Shudakov, Grigori, Olga Suslova, and Lilya Ukhtomskaya.
Pioneers of Soviet Photography. New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1983.
Tupitsyn, Margaret. ‘‘Against the Camera, For the Photo-
graphic Archive.’’Art Journal53 (1994): 58–62.
———.The Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937. New York:
Yale University Press, 1996.
Tupitsyn, Victor. ‘‘The Sun Without a Muzzle.’’Art Journal
53 (1994): 80–84.
Welchman, J. 1990. ‘‘The Photograph in Power: Images
from the Soviet Union.’’Arts Magazine64 (1990): 74–
78.CHARLES SHEELER
American
Charles Sheeler (1883–1965) is predominantly known
as a painter rather than a photographer, but pho-
tography played a significant role in the development
of the artist’s work. Moreover, Sheeler’s engagement
with photography was instrumental in the devel-
opment of early twentieth-century photographic
practice, particularly the notions of ‘‘straight’’ or
‘‘objective’’ photography in America. Sheeler’s
workismostoftenassociatedwithPrecisionism
(sometimes referred to as Cubist-Realism), a style of
American art identifiable by its fusion of indigenous
industrial subject matter and European modernist
abstraction. Considered the most accomplished of
the so-called Precisionists, perhaps Sheeler’s most
highly regarded and famous paintings—American
Landscape and Classic Landscape—are based on
commissioned photographs of Ford’s River Rouge
Plant (for example, seeFord Plant, River Rouge,
Canal with Salvage Ship, 1927). The photographs
of the Rouge are unusual in that the industrial
processes of production remain hidden, almost
mysterious; the images appear more a meditation
on architectural and structural forms, as well as
machinery rather than a linear documentary of the
production processes (seeFord Plant, River Rouge,
Bleeder Stacks, 1927). The images are also unusual
because they have come to be seen as artistic
photographs despite their commercial beginnings;
the Rouge images represent a moment where art
and commerce intersect, where Sheeler is both
artistic photographer and photographer for hire.
Sheeler’s radical interpretation of the Rouge has
it roots in the artist’s unusual relationship to pho-
tography, which can be traced back to the very
beginning of his career. Charles Rettew Sheeler Jr.
was born in 1883 in Philadelphia to middle-class
parents who encouraged and supported his desire
to be a painter. In 1900, at the age of 17, SheelerSHAIKHET, ARKADII