SOCIALIST PHOTOGRAPHY
Socialist photography emerged in the Soviet Union
from a context of decades of severe social, eco-
nomic, and political dislocations, including World
War, revolution, civil war, and depression. The
October Revolution of 1917 and eventual defeat
of capitalist forces during the civil war of the
1920s offered the promise of peace and the end of
centuries of oppression. The Soviet state, which
claimed to be something radically new, a ‘‘dictator-
ship of the proletariat,’’ held out a promise of hope
for the masses during a time of economic collapse
and world depression. During the first decade fol-
lowing the revolution, photography suggested an
effective means to identify social problems and
suggest improvements by revealing the truth.
Photographers were enlisted to provide evidence
of government programs for improving social wel-
fare. This was a major undertaking of an impress-
ive scale towards which substantial government
resources were directed. Photographs would pro-
vide a national testament to government political
policies and values. Photography was seen to offer
more convincing evidence about reality than the
written word.
Photographers in the new society provided the
evidence in support of projects that suggested a
heroic response to socioeconomic problems guided
by a strong state. For the leaders of the new state,
photography would confirm the successes of social-
ism in overcoming economic underdevelopment left
by centuries of despotic feudal rule. This occurred
within the context of a socialism from above that
was established as an early part of Bolshevik rule
under Lenin. Government control over information
and culture favored a uniformity of easily under-
stood and accessible products and images that
might garner mass appeal.
At the same time one must avoid the common
error of viewing the emergence and development of
socialist photography as a uniform process of repres-
sion and censorship typically associated with Social-
ist Realism, a term that covers painting, sculpture,
graphic arts, and architecture. While the government
may have selected and shaped photography to
advance its aims while covering its extreme and
vast repression, in general the photographers were
guided by their own convictions, hopes, and beliefs.
Rather than presenting an almost caricatured uni-
formity, as has traditionally been portrayed to West-
ern audiences, socialist photography demonstrated a
diversity of approaches.
In the early years there was room for lively
debate and criticism concerning photographic tech-
niques. Soviet photographers in the decade and a
half after the Revolution were free to operate
within generally broad parameters. Photographers
and designers used approaches such as photomon-
tage to celebrate Soviet accomplishments and offer
prefigurative visions of the socialist future.
Photographers in the newly emerging post-capi-
talist society sincerely believed in the future of pro-
gress and fulfillment promised by socialism.
Working in the service of constructing a classless
society was a worthy and legitimate goal. Pictures
were meant to show foreign audiences that Soviet
workers were well off, not hungry as the foreign
press suggested. It was typical practice for Soviet
photographers to partake in the work they photo-
graphed in order to make their pictures more
authentic and convincing to audiences. Indeed,
within the Soviet ideology, photographers were
workers themselves.
Soviet photographers, however, were not required
to join the Communist Party, and most did not. At
the same time, magazine and newspaper editors, who
were the individuals held accountable for what was
published, typically did join the Party. Editors were
regularly given directives from the Central Commit-
tee of the Communist Party.
By the late 1920s almost every Soviet factory had
a photo club. In exchange for access to equipment
and materials photo club members were expected
to produce photos showing the advances of social-
ist development and pictures had to meet govern-
ment needs. This showed an early expression of the
strong state interest in shaping photographic pro-
duction. In adherence to the principle that pho-
tographers should become laborers themselves,
learning the work to be photographed in order to
represent labor convincingly and positively, pho-
tographers immersed themselves in the labor col-
lectives at specific work sites prior to beginning the
photo assignment. This practice, however, had the
further philosophical and aesthetic effect of blur-SOCIALIST PHOTOGRAPHY