Seealso:Agitprop; Photography in Europe: Russia
and Eastern Europe; Propaganda; Shaikhet, Arkady;
Socialist Photography; Worker Photographer
Biography
Born in 1899 in Simferopol in the Crimea. Relocated to
Odessa; apprentice in a photographic studio, 1914. Red
Army service, 1919; a leader of the Red Army’s photo-
graphic brigade, early 1920s. Joined the Moscow news-
paper Rabochaya Gazeta 1924–1928. Hired by the
newspaperPravda, 1928, worked photographing collec-
tivization of agriculture and construction during the first
of Stalin’s Five Year Plans. Began work for the maga-
zineUSSR na stroike; work on photo essayTwenty-Four
Hours in the Life of the Filippov Family, 1931. Involve-
ment in Union of Russian Proletarian Photographers
(ROPF), early 1930s. Correspondent for TASS News
Agency, 1941–1945. After the war he worked for the
Soviet Information Office and Novosti Press Agency.
Died 1980.
Selected Works
Magnitogorskii Zavod, 1929
Viktor Kalmikov on the Train to Magnitogorsk, 1929
A Kulak’s Cottage Is Given to a Poor Peasant, 1930
Viktor Kalmikov, 1930
Construction of Magnitogarsk Steelworks, 1930
Viktor Kalmikov at Night School, Magnitogorsk, 1931
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of the Filippov Family, 1931
Elections to the USSR Supreme Soviet, 1936
View of Dnepro-GES Dam, The Ukraine, 1936
Construction of Fergana Canal, 1939
Three Fergana Canal Workers, 1939
The Line of Fergana Canal Workers, 1939
Workers at Sunrise, 1960Further Reading
Bakshtein, J. ‘‘Russian Photography and Its Contexts.’’Art
Journal53 (1994): 43–44.
Bendavid-Val, Leah.Propaganda and Dreams: Photograph-
ing the 1930s in the USSR and the US. Zurich: Edition
Stemmle, 1999.
Carlisle, Olga. ‘‘The Aperture of Memory.’’Aperture 116
(1989): 40–45.
Eerikainen, Hannu. ‘‘Up from Underground.’’Aperture 116
(1989): 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.
Tupitsyn, Margaret.The Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937.
New York: Yale University Press, 1994.
Tupitsyn, Victor. ‘‘The Sun Without a Muzzle.’’Art Journal
53 (1994): 80–84.
Welchman, J. ‘‘The Photograph in Power: Images from the
Soviet Union.’’Arts Magazine64 (1990): 74–78.AN AMERICAN PLACE
In the aftermath of the catastrophic stock market
crash that ushered in the Great Depression, photo-
grapher and curator Alfred Stieglitz opened his last
gallery in December 1929. Stieglitz’s first gallery,
The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (known
as ‘‘291’’ for its location at 291 Fifth Avenue in
New York City) had been open from 1903 to 1917,
and during those years, Stieglitz had championed
photography as a fine art with exhibitions of Amer-
ican and European photographers and painters
that provoked questions about the relationship
between media and advanced the cause of an
avant-garde aesthetic. During the 1920s, Stieglitz’s
own photographic production had flourished,
inspired by his new relationship with painter Geor-
gia O’Keeffe, and he continued to champion the
cause of modern art in America with exhibitions he
organized at the Anderson Galleries (1921–1925)
and The Intimate Gallery (1925–1929), both in
New York City. In these years Stieglitz made
some of his best-known works, including his photo-
graphs of clouds known asEquivalentsand his vast
portrait of O’Keeffe undertaken over two decades.
As the 1929 season at The Intimate Gallery came to
a close in May, Stieglitz learned that the building
would be demolished. Several colleagues feltALPERT, MAX