Workers and Labor
Within Soviet art, photography rose to prominence with its increased use in illustrated journals of the 1920s. From the beginning, women entered the photojournalism profession, although they remained a minority in the field. Journals such as Sovetskoe Foto (Soviet Photo), SSSR Na Stroike (USSR in Construction), and Pioner (Pioneer), were just a few of the publications that paid for photographs and hired women for assignments. Women photographers captured an array of subjects that showed the everyday interests and preoccupations of Soviet citizens, such as industrial labor, life on communes, collective farming, sporting competitions, and the Moscow zoo.
These photographers were expected to create images that reflected real aspects of Soviet life, always focusing their subject matter on workers, working conditions, and workplaces. A rising demand for photographs to document actual, true-to-life narratives in magazines, newspapers, and books meant that photographers were under increased pressure from editors. They had to deliver powerful images of current events while creating exciting compositions by manipulating variables such as length of exposure and lighting.
Olga Ignatovich (Russian, 1905–1984)
Olga Ignatovich was part of a collective of photographers known as the “Ignatovich Brigade,” along with her brother Boris Ignatovich (1899-1976) and his wife Elizaveta Ignatovich (1903-1983). During her long career as a photojournalist, Olga worked for the Soviet Union’s leading magazines and publishing houses. As seen in the photographs included in this exhibition, the women in Ignatovich’s photographs were industrial workers, professional athletes, and soldiers—women who were visible in society in nontraditional ways and outside of the domestic sphere. The Ignatoviches were inspired by avant-garde photographer Aleksandr Rodchenko’s use of oblique vantage points—a strategy echoed in this photograph. Here, the two runners are shown from the perspective of the starting line as they race toward a finish line while stands of fans cheer them on.
Natalia Tsekhomskaya (Russian, b. 1945)
Natalia Tsekhomskaya’s “Nevskii Trudovoi” Honor Board (Nevskii Avenue Worker) series was made in Soviet Union’s final years, memorializing her subjects as some of the last entries in the Soviet worker photography portrait genre. Tsekhomaskaya was based in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg, Russia) during an unprecedented time of cultural and political changes created by the new government policies of perestroika (“restructuring”) and glasnost (“openness”).
Taken in a style associated with the ‘honest’ values of social documentary photography, these images show workers in their actual factory workplaces. While official Soviet photography typically depicted workers in an idealized and heroic way, Tsekhomskaya’s series portrays them unadorned and in stark detail—as they really were. Thus, her portraits combine features of a photographic tradition typically associated with the West, and the Soviet Union’s official style of Socialist Realism.
Olga Lander (Russian, 1909–1996)
Olga Lander was a frontline photojournalist for the Red Army during World War II. Her photographs appeared in the newspaper Sovetskii Voin (Soviet Warrior), which covered the operations of the 3rd Ukrainian Front. By her own estimate taking thousands of images during the war, she traveled on the front lines with the Red Army through Eastern Europe to Vienna, Austria, where she celebrated the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945. Many of her wartime images focus on the routine and ordinary moments of soldiers’ lives, rather than epic scenes of battles. Photographs like this one record the details of passing events which might otherwise be forgotten. After the war, she returned to civilian life and continued to photograph professionally for various Soviet publications. Her post-war photographs often focused on everyday life in the Soviet Union and women’s labor in society.
Lialia Kuznetsova (Kazakhstani, b. 1946)
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1979. Gelatin silver print on paper, 8 1/8 × 11 5/8 in. (20.6 × 29.5 cm), 2000.1082. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1979. Gelatin silver print on paper, 9 7/16 × 14 in. (23.9 × 35.6 cm), 2000.1084. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1979. Gelatin silver print on paper, 9 7/16 × 14 in. (23.9 × 35.5 cm), 2000.1085. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1979. Gelatin silver print on paper, 9 7/16 × 13 13/16 in. (23.9 × 35.1 cm), 2000.1086. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1979. Gelatin silver print on paper, 9 5/8 × 14 3/8 in. (24.5 × 36.5 cm), 2000.1089. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Lialia Kuznetsova, Untitled, 1986. Gelatin silver print on paper, 9 5/8 × 14 7/16 in. (24.4 × 36.7 cm), 2000.1087. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
