Sovfoto
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Sovfoto was established in 1932 as the only agency to represent Soviet
photojournalism Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...
in America. It continues today as a commercial entity Sovfoto/Eastfoto. Collections from its archive are held also at MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Canada which in 2001 was donated 23,116 vintage gelatin silver prints dating from 1936 to 1957, while University of Massachusetts Amherst holds the Tass Sovfoto Photograph Collection, 1919–1963, the majority being from 1943–1963.


Establishment

Sovfoto agency was originally established by the USSR in New York in the early 1930s to distribute Soviet press photography throughout North America.


Clientele

All were printed, and often retouched, in the USSR with English captions as they were intended for a North American audience. Associated Press and International New Services and other major wire agencies paid a subscription fee to license the material, and offered it to illustrated magazines like '' Life, Time and Newsweek'' and ''
Look To look is to use sight to perceive an object. Look or The Look may refer to: Businesses and products * Look (modeling agency), an Israeli modeling agency * ''Look'' (American magazine), a defunct general-interest magazine * ''Look'' (UK ma ...
'', to newspapers, school textbook publishers, and also to
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
-aligned and communist-sympathetic publications, as well as selling to the
State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
and various branches of the Armed Forces as the only source of regular visual reportage on the Soviet Union. Three Sovfoto pictures appeared (credited to the agency) in MoMA's 1955 exhibition curated by Edward Steichen, '' The Family of Man.'' Sponsored by America's own propaganda unit the United States Information Agency, it toured the world and was attended by 9 million visitors. It was included in the Moscow trade fair at
Sokolniki Park Sokolniki Park, named for the falconry, falcon hunt of the Grand Dukes of Muscovy formerly conducted there, is located in the eponymous Sokolniki District of Moscow. Sokolniki Park is not far from the center of the Moscow, city, near Sokolnich ...
, the scene of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and United States Vice President Richard Nixon's ' Kitchen Debate' over the relative merits of communism and capitalism.


New York office

After World War II, Sovfoto continued, adding imagery from Eastern European countries of the
Communist bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
as well as China. The agency started doing business as Sovfoto/Eastfoto in the late 1940s, moving offices several times under a series of American owners, including Helen Black (at 11 West Forty-second Street, New York City 18, then 15 West 44th Street) up to 1952, Edwin S. Smith to 1964 (at 24 West 45th Street), then Liuba Solov at 25 West 43rd Street. Solov managed the business until 1974 when Leah Siegel took ownership, moving in 1987 to 225 West 34th Street Suite 1505, and employing Victoria Edwards who bought the company in the early 1990s. Edwards’ son Vanya took over upon her retirement and is the current owner/manager.


McCarthy-era suspicions

As a
Communist bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
agency, Sovfoto came under suspicion during the
McCarthy McCarthy (also spelled MacCarthy or McCarty) may refer to: * MacCarthy, a Gaelic Irish clan * McCarthy, Alaska, United States * McCarty, Missouri, United States * McCarthy Road, a road in Alaska * McCarthy (band), an indie pop band * Château MacC ...
era. When Sovfoto released photographs of purported biological warfare committed by the Americans, the then-owner Edwin Smith was brought before the
House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
to testify on his role in their publication. At the time of his ownership as ‘Foreign Principal’, the ''Report of the
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to the Congress of the United States on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 as Amended June 1951, for the Calendar Year 1955'', notes that ‘Propaganda photographs (for the
U.S.S.R. 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 ...
) are distributed by Edwin S. Smith, doing business under the name of Sovfoto Agency’ as well as ‘
propaganda 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 ...
material from Communist China’. Smith (1891–1975) was owner and manager of Am-Rus Literary and Music Agency, also Sovfoto and Eastfoto Agency from 1952–64, and represented legations and press and photo agencies Mezhdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow; Czechopress, Prague; China Photo Service, Peking; Agerpress, Bucharest; Zentral Bild, East Berlin; Hungarian Review Photo Service (formerly Hungarian Bulletin), Budapest; Legation of the Hungarian People's Republic; Czechoslovakian Embassy; Legation of the People's Republic of Rumania; Polish Embassy; Czechoslovak Life, Prague; Cartimex (previously Centrul de Librarii Si Difuzare a Cartii "IMEX"), Bucharest; and Artia, Prague. The agency received $40,872.75 from sale of photographs in 1955.


Current operation

Until the fall of the Communist/Soviet bloc, Sovfoto remained the exclusive legitimate source of news photography from the Communist countries and it continues to represent ITAR-TASS in Russia and Xinhua in China and others, while maintaining the historical archive. The Agency continues to operate from 263 West 20th St. #3 New York 10011 under the management of Vanya Edwards.


Archive

The Sovfoto archiv holds the largest collection of photographs of
Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...
USSR outside of the state archives in Moscow. Furthermore, it includes images of Russia from the time of the Tsars, through Lenin, Stalin,
Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Premier of the Soviet Union, chairm ...
, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, World War II and Militaria, the space program, and a wide range of areas from Soviet society. Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn, curator and author of ''The Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937'' wrote: : "The Sovfoto archive is of unquestionable status....Many of the photographs stand out as artistically remarkable and strong images as well as documentation of the human experience... The Sovfoto archive presents a visual depository for rich interdisciplinary studies, including photography, sociology, psychology and history...The annotations on the back of each photograph further enables the researcher to delve into invaluable historical layers of knowledge that would require a long time to find in other sources...The Sovfoto archive is the only one of its kind in North America." For anthropologists, for example, the archive provides visual evidence; in Ruth Benedict's study 'Child rearing in Eastern European Countries,' Sovfoto imagery showed the prevalence of swaddling. The Sovfoto photographs present the state-sanctioned, propagandistic promotion of the progress and achievements of communism. In 1950 ''Newsweek'' generated controversy around a Sovfoto picture of 70-year old Prime Minister Stalin casting his ballot for the March 12 Soviet elections; they showed that a head shot of Stalin from years before had been 'simply pasted' into the news photo. Conversely, in 1956,
Stewart Alsop Stewart Johonnot Oliver Alsop (May 17, 1914 – May 26, 1974) was an American newspaper columnist and political analyst. Early life Alsop was born and raised in Avon, Connecticut, from an old Yankee family. Alsop attended Groton School and Yale ...
in '' The Courier-Journal'' demonstrated how reliable information on Soviet weapons programs could be obtained from Sovfoto images. The magazine '' Aviation Week'' was called to The Pentagon for publishing 'top secret' photographs of flights over Moscow by the new Soviet heavy bomber, the
Bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North Ame ...
, the existence of which had been denied as 'fake' by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, to which charge the ''Aviation Week'' editor protested that they had simply obtained the pictures from Sovfoto. Nevertheless, they also constitute historical record. When Lillian Hellman was writing the screenplay for ''The North Star'' she relied on Sovfoto location pictures for the recreation of Ukrainian cooperative Kamenetz Podolsk. At the outbreak of World War II, many Soviet photographers became war correspondents, incorporating the photographic invention of the
revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective, to refer to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor. ...
avant-garde in documenting the lives and deaths of Russian troops, conflict, destruction and German atrocities. Sovfoto coverage of the Red Army's advance produced by Russian photographers turned war correspondents arrived at Associated Press offices in New York by radio from Moscow as early as August 1944. These were the first evidence of the Holocaust; one showing residents of
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surrounding a pit filled with bodies of those killed by the Germans who occupied the city; another, according to the Sovfoto caption accompanying it, showed: "The Lublin camp of annihilation. In their well-built cremation ovens, the Hitlerites daily burnt the bodies of those whom they tortured to death in the camp." During the Korean War, Eastfoto images of American
POW A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...
's distributed by Sovfoto led to the identification of at least two of the US combatants pictured.


The photographers

The archive contains images taken by many anonymous photographers, as well as foremost Soviet photographers, documenting a period of history in the twentieth century which has had a very lasting impact. After the crackdown of 1932, many of the Soviet Union's leading avant-garde photographers found that their only available means of expression was press photography. The Sovfoto archive includes images from many Soviet photographers who have become historically important:


References


External links


Sovfoto/Eastfoto website
{{Authority control Photojournalism organizations Mass media in the Soviet Union Press release agencies News agencies based in the United States Photography in the Soviet Union Propaganda in the Soviet Union Soviet photographers Photography companies of Russia Soviet Union–United States relations Photo archives in Canada Photo archives in the United States Photo agencies