''Sovetskoe Foto'' (Russian: Советское фото, English: 'Soviet Photography') was the sole specialist photography magazine in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Founded by the writer and editor Mikhail Kotsov in April 1926, it was published in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, from 1926 to 1991.

The publication

''Sovetskoe Fotos editorials, letters, articles, advertisements for photographic chemicals and equipment, technical instruction and photoessays catered to a broad audience from professional photojournalists to amateur photographers, 'worker–photographers' and the camera clubs established post-WWII at almost every industrial plant and

Palace of Culture Palace of Culture (russian: Дворец культуры, dvorets kultury, , ''wénhuà gōng'', german: Kulturpalast) or House of Culture (Polish: ''dom kultury'') is a common name (generic term) for major Club (organization), club-houses (comm ...

throughout Soviet Union, and promoted the 'worker photographer' and the official photographic culture of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, though it also carried examples of state-sanctioned international photography. It was published monthly with exceptions being double issues in some years and during 1929 and 1930, when it was published twice a month. In 1931 it was acquired by the Ogonek publishing company and briefly renamed ''Proletarskoe foto'' (Proletariat photography). It appeared only once in two months in 1934. It suspended publication between 1942 and 1956 because of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and the resultant postwar economic situation.

Ethos

Koltsov launched ''Sovetskoe Foto'' as a forum for photojournalists across the country, Soviet in ethos, and distinct from

Pictorialist Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...

art photography. In its first editorial it proclaimed: The magazine recognised and promoted the value of photography to the communist cause; a photograph of a steel-worker was captioned: "In the USSR photography is one of the weapons of the

class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms ...

and of socialist construction.”Tupitsyn, M. (1994). Against the Camera, for the Photographic Archive. Art Journal, 53(2), 58-62. Its pages became the site of ideological battle. The cover of ''Sovetskoe Foto'', no. 10, October 1927 (above) featured the well-known Aleksandr Rodchenko portrait ''Mat’'' ('Mother'), of 1924, but by as early as April 1928, thus even before

Socialist Realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...

was decreed in 1934 to be the official style of the Soviet Union, the works of avant-garde photographers, including Rodchenko’s, were denounced in a reader’s letter as ‘formalist’, foreign and elitist, ‘

plagiarised Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...

’ from Western European photographers

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...

and

Albert Renger-Patzsch Albert Renger-Patzsch (June 22, 1897 – September 27, 1966) was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity. Biography Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg and began making photographs by age twelve. After military service in the F ...

. Rodchenko’s work was banished from the magazine and he had to use '' Novy Lef'', a journal for alternative art and culture, to respond. This conflict of avant-garde "Octoberist" photographers and photographers of and for the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

culminated in 1931 with the formation of the Russian Association of Proletarian Photo Reporters (ROPF), which promoted its mission to use photography as “a weapon for the socialist reconstruction of reality” in ''Sovetskoe foto''. Throughout the 1930s the journal became increasingly conservative in valuing content over form, and by the mid-1930s ''Sovetskoe Foto'''s cover shots of workers and working photographers were being replaced by those of the leaders and

apparatchik __NOTOC__ An apparatchik (; russian: аппара́тчик ) was a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Soviet government ''apparat'' ( аппарат, apparatus), someone who held any position ...

s, with

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

gracing almost every cover.

Influences

Though the Soviet regime isolated its population from outside influences, and though photography served a more directly

propagandistic Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

purpose than elsewhere, there are clear overlaps in the type of imagery in the magazine with counterparts in

the West West is a cardinal direction or compass point. West or The West may also refer to: Geography and locations Global context * The Western world * Western culture and Western civilization in general * The Western Bloc, countries allied with NATO ...

;Werneke, J. (2017). 'Reimagining the History of the Avant-garde: Photography and the Journal Sovetskoe foto in the 1950s and Early 1960s'. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 44(3), 264-291. its inter-war

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...

tendency and subject matter has parallels in Western Europe in '' Vu'' and the United States in ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

''. By the 1970s and 1980s, contributors shared a fascination with

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

, posterisation and optical effects with photographers whose work was found in the Swiss ''

Camera A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...

'' of the same period.Alise Tifentale, Seeing a Century Through the Lens of Sovetskoe Foto, Cultural Analytics Lab, July 31, 2018
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

External links

The Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

hosts scanned copies of most ''Sovetskoe foto'' issues, though only few from the 1960s. 1926 establishments in the Soviet Union 1991 disestablishments in Russia Defunct magazines published in Russia Magazines established in 1926 Magazines disestablished in 1991 Magazines published in Moscow Magazines published in the Soviet Union Photography in the Soviet Union Photography magazines {{italic title