Friends of the USSR to SoyuzFoto, which commis-
sioned the project in 1931. The series was devised to
show in a direct and straightforward manner the
everyday lives of members of the Filippov family,
the husband and father of which worked at the Red
Proletarian factory in Moscow. Under Mezhe-
richer’s editorial supervision the study was effi-
ciently executed in five days.
The series, which published 52 of more than 80
photographs, reflects the ROPF photographers’
desire to capture concrete reality as an organic
whole in which individual parts and the whole
form a dialectical unity. The images depict specific
events in the life of what was claimed to be a typical
family, beginning with portrayals of the Moscow
neighborhood in which the Filippovs live. Contrast
is made between the Filippov’s pre-revolutionary
wooden house and their new and comfortable
apartment building by including a shot of their
former dwelling. The meaning of such juxtaposi-
tions is reinforced with explanatory texts detailing
the surroundings inside and outside of the building.
The photographers went on to present a portrait
of the Filippov family as they enjoy morning tea,
with text that identifies each family member so that
the viewer can follow them as they go about their
day, on the streetcar, in the factory where the
father and son work, in the stores where the mother
shops, and in the store where the daughter works.
The Soviet government was an enthusiastic sup-
porter of the project since it promised to fulfill an
important propaganda role in displaying the idylls
of socialist life for a European audience. It held
great expectations for the project as a rare oppor-
tunity to communicate information about the lives
of workers under Communism.
In their article ‘‘How We Photographed the Filip-
povs,’’ Alpert and Shaikhet suggest that they viewed
series photos ‘‘not as a ‘simple’ display of a succes-
sion of workbenches or detached people at work-
benches; a series has to reveal the social essence of
objects and events as a whole, in their complete
dialectical diversity’’ (quoted in Tupitsyn, 1996, 85–
86). Alpert and Shaikhet further criticized the docu-
mentary approach taken by photojournalists such as
Rodchenko and Ignatovich who, in their view,
arrived at a work site and opportunistically selected
parts of it. Alpert and Shaikhet proposed what they
saw as a more productive approach to industrial
subject matter involving the ‘‘observation of some
giant in order to periodically reflect truly well
through snapshots how it began to be built, what
the difficulties of construction were, how it grew...
and finally the collective that emerged a winner in this
struggle’’ (quoted in Tupitsyn, 1996, 86). For Alpert
and Shaikhet, and this is reflected in their Filippov
series, the task of the photographer is to grasp mate-
rial reality as an organic whole and to present it in
accessible and complete photos. In their approach
meaning is derived from the particularity of the peo-
ple and contexts presented in each picture.
Soviet magazines had begun to experiment with
photographic sequences, or photo stories, that went
beyond single images to present narratives over
space and time in the late 1920s, but the impact of
the Filippov study made such projects the preferred
form of socialist photo work. Following the pub-
lication of the series,Proletarskoye Fotoanalyzed
the photo essay, calling it a new art form, akin to,
but unique from, film. In 1931, the Central Com-
mittee of the Proletarian Cinematographers and
Photographers lauded the photographic approach
offered in ‘‘Twenty-Four Hours’’ as the model for
the proletarianization of Soviet photography.
Other important photo stories, including Rodchen-
ko’s White Sea Canal series and Markov-Grin-
berg’s study of the miner Izotov, soon followed.
During the first few years of the first Five-Year
Plan the Communist Party had given little support
for one representational approach over another
and various groups pursued their particular pro-
jects simultaneously. As long as the work could be
viewed as generally supportive of the state’s social
and economic projects, photographers were sub-
jected to minimal interference. Government maga-
zines provided space for multiple perspectives on
photographic practice within the Soviet Union and
allowed various schools to make their claims on the
face of and future for socialist photography.
This began to change towards the end of the first
Five-Year Plan. The first expressions of official
condemnation, directed at the October photogra-
phers, came at the time of their photo exhibition of- Significantly the most severe and influential
denunciations came from the leaders of the ROPF
photographers Alpert and Shaikhet. This culmi-
nated on April 23, 1932, when the Communist
Party issued a ‘‘Decree on the Reconstruction of
Literary and Artistic Organizations,’’ which abol-
ished the diverse art and literary organizations that
had emerged since the revolution. The era of multi-
ple approaches was brought to a close with the
realists, such as those in ROPF, emerging as the
preferred approach.
The Codification of Socialist Realism
A month after the April decree was published, pho-
tographers were served further notice, in a reportSOCIALIST PHOTOGRAPHY