and domestic audiences, also provided vivid pic-
tures of Soviet life and the creative development
of a new society. One of the most famous examples
of this practice was Max Alpert, Arkadii Shaikhet,
and Salomon Tules’s 1931 picture story ‘‘Twenty-
Four Hours in the Life of the Filippov Family’’
(increasingly translated as ‘‘A Day in the Life of a
Moscow Working-Class Family’’) at the end of the
century. The project was organized by Lazar Mez-
hericher as a manifestation of his views as ex-
pressed in his article ‘‘Serial Photography as the
Highest Stage of Photographic Propaganda.’’ This
photo-essay was not only published as a cover
story in the German weeklyArbeiter Illustrierte
Zeitungbut, somewhat antithetically to the princi-
ples of socialist photography, resulted in an exhibi-
tion that toured Europe.
At a time when documentary photography was
thriving in the United States and Europe, Soviet
photographers inspired socialist artists in northern
and central Europe and, to a lesser extent, pho-
tographers in America. This was especially the
case during Lenin’s NEP period in the 1920s. The
European ‘‘worker photography’’ movement, in-
cluding the British mass observation phenomenon,
was strongly influenced by Soviet developments
towards a new proletarian photography.
Aesthetic and Ideological Conflicts
At the same time a diversity of approaches, styles,
viewpoints, and practices flourished throughout
the first decades following the revolution. Leaders
grappled with different approaches as they were
developed and proselytized in their efforts to estab-
lish the most suitable means to communicate their
goals with the masses. Multiplicity and variety con-
tinued even through the period of Joseph Stalin’s
ruthless consolidation of power against his Com-
munist Party rivals after Lenin’s death in 1924.
This diversity of photographic expression contin-
ued through the 1920s and into the 1930s as Soviet
leadership sought to develop effective means for
popularizing their programs.
Throughout the period of the first Five-Year
Plan, begun in 1928, a number of groups emerged
side by side, each receiving critical attention. The
one thing on which most agreed, to varying de-
grees, was a commitment to realism. Within this
broad commitment, however, co-existed vast dif-
ferences concerning the media and approaches that
could best represent the goals and aspirations of
the Soviet culture and, as significantly, the state. By
the end of the first Five-Year Plan the model of the
artist-producer was thriving.
During the early period of the Soviet regime
there were two primary poles of attraction: those
who sought to apply experimental modernist forms
to render the new socialist reality and those who
argued that everyday reality be presented in a
straightforward manner. Much critical discussion
at the time revolved around these different ap-
proaches to representation.
These differences are most clearly seen in the com-
peting efforts of two main photography groups, the
October Group and the Union of Russian Proletar-
ian Photographers (ROPF). The October Group
held their first exhibition at Gorky Park in 1930
and followed with a second exhibition at the House
of Publishing in May 1931. The ROPF group held a
separate exhibition at the House of Publishing at the
time of October’s showing. The simultaneous but
separate exhibitions made clear the differences bet-
ween the groups’ works and initiated a series of
intense debates over the proper vision for socialist
photography. While October photographers ap-
proached reality in terms of fragments, uncertainties,
and contradictions, ROPF photographers offered
images that might provide a picture of the totality
of Soviet social development. These reflected signifi-
cant differences in approaches to composition. At
the same time, even here, there was a cross-pollina-
tion as ROPF photographers employed techniques
and angles used by October photographers.
The October Union, founded in 1928, was estab-
lished by many of the artists who had become
leading voices of the avant-garde worldwide in the
teens and early 1920s; it brought together film-
makers, architects, sculptors, and graphic designers
as well as photographers. Octoberist members
included Alexandr Rodchenko and filmmaker Ser-
gei Eisenstein. The photography section, most
commonly referred to as the October Group,
formed in 1930, including among its membership
Rodchenko, Elizar Langman, Boris Ignatovich and
his wife Olga and sister Elizaveta Ignatovich,
Abram Shterenberg, and Dmitri Debabov.
The Octoberists sought to bring mass production
techniques to their art while developing new media
that might meet the needs of the emerging new
society. For October members, artistic production
would serve as a tool in socialist construction. This
productivist approach was reflected in October’s
emphasis on artists as workers rather than creators
and in their insistence that divisions between ama-
teurs and professionals be eliminated. These pho-
tographers were motivated by the aims of the first
Five-Year Plan and insisted that members, as cul-
tural production workers, pursue photojournalism
in popular media such as newspapers and maga-SOCIALIST PHOTOGRAPHY