WORKER PHOTOGRAPHY
The worker-photographer movement was active in
Germany from 1926 to 1932. Worker photography
continued a nineteenth and early twentieth-century
tradition and preceded American social docu-
mentary photography of the 1930s. It involved
the German publisher Willi Mu ̈nzenberg’s aim to
create his own photo-agency of worker photogra-
phers who could provide hisArbeiter-Illustrierte-
Zeitung(Worker Illustrated Magazine, AIZ, 1924–
1938) with the needed picture material to promote
Communist ideological principles. The picture ma-
terial from the major German photo-agencies such
asMauritius-photo,ufa-photo, andEcce-photohad
threatened to boycott the AIZ, and the American
photo-agencies such as Keystone, AP, and World-
wide hardly covered the conditions of working-
class life in Weimar Germany. The social plight
of the worker became the central theme of the
AIZ, which aimed to counterbalance the bourgeois
press and win over the consciousness of unorga-
nized workers, themselves a new social force in an
experimental democratic period. Though the term
worker photography has been used broadly to indi-
cate any photography that focuses on labor, it most
correctly describes the brief history of this collective
of amateur worker photographers from its inception
to decimation by the Nazis.
The history of worker photography coincides
with the relative stability in the German economy
in 1923 and renewed faith in the Ebert government,
which caused the workers movement to reorient
itself towards a long-term struggle to develop
class consciousness among workers. Propaganda
and agitation took on a much more significant
role in consolidating Communist influence and
winning over unorganized workers. In 1923, the
Communist party issued a new agitprop concept,
opening the way for Mu ̈nzenberg to establish a
network of media production and distribution.
Willi Mu ̈nzenberg and the AIZ
Mu ̈nzenberg had a special status within the Ger-
man Communist Party because he had been under
the orders of the Control Commission of the Com-
munist International since 1921. Mu ̈nzenberg’s
special status enabled him to act on the new poten-
tial force of pictorial propaganda. He innovatively
used not only print media but also picture media—
photography and film—to the greatest possible ef-
fect upon the masses.
Together the AIZ and its photo-agency theVer-
einigung der Arbeiter-Fotografen (Association of
Worker Photographers) would create a truly col-
lective form of journalism, in which the producers
and the readers of the periodical were one and the
same, and leave a lasting impact on the production
of photojournalism in 1930s.
Lenin recognized his friend Mu ̈nzenberg’s abilities
as an organizer and coordinator. He directly com-
missioned him to direct the Internationale Ar-
beiterhilfe(International Workers’ Aid, IAH). The
German section of the IAH would remain self-suf-
ficient and independent of the German Communist
Party and the Red Aid (Moscow). It set its own
guidelines and had its own organization and media
apparatus that promoted sympathy for the Soviet
Union, for socialism in general, as well as for the
realization of a socialist society. The IAH acted as a
second medium that substituted and protected the
German Communist Party’s and Communist Inter-
national’s propaganda apparatus in times of cen-
sorship and persecution as was the case from 1923
to 1924. This independent status of the IAH gave
Mu ̈nzenberg the necessary freedom to organize
and effectively implement propagandistic cam-
paigns, using illustrated magazines. Such mass-dis-
tributed publications came to define the role and
style of photojournalism.
The reason for the IAH’s founding was to cam-
paign for aid to alleviate the suffering of workers
and families suffering from a drought-induced fam-
ine in Russia. To this end Mu ̈nzenberg published a
monthly illustrated magazine calledSowjet Russ-
land im Bild(Soviet Russia in Pictures) in 1921.
This illustrated magazine served as an organ of
the IAH and was distributed through IAH groups
internationally. It appeared in the United States
under the titleSoviet Russia Pictorial. In 1923, the
magazine’s name changed toSichel und Hammer
(Sickle and Hammer), and then to AIZ in 1924.
With the changes in name and format—from
monthly to weekly—came changes in the maga-
zine’s scope. The magazine shifted its focus fromWORKER PHOTOGRAPHY