The histories of the Soviet photograph: At home and abroad

Abstract

The period of Soviet photography, whose histories written at home and abroad I would like to introduce here, did not last more than one decade. At one end, it can be framed with the death of Lenin and A1eksandr Rodchenko's first experiments with straight photography in 1924. At the other, it is framed by Stalin's enactment of the new Constitution in 1936 and the opening of the Pervaia vsesoiuznaia vystavka fotoiskusstva (First All-Union Exhibition of Photo Art) at the State Pushkin Museum in 1937. Scholars beginning their work in the 1960s and through the first years of perestroika constructed the notion of what is known today as the Soviet avant-garde by focusing primarily on non-objective production. The period between 1924 and 1937, with its strong inclinations towards figurative styles and increasing dosage of political iconography, was largely dismissed as merely being a precursor of socialist realism. Obsessed as these scholars were with the crusade for the de-politicization of the art of the Soviet avant-garde, they viewed photography as rife with socio-political connotations and documentary imagery as a substantial obstacle to the success of their purely aesthetic project.