Jessica Werneke’s presentation «Artistic Photojournalism: Soviet Photography in the 1950s and 1960s»
On March 01 the Center's postdoctoral research fellow Jessica Werneke will give a presentation «Artistic Photojournalism: Soviet Photography in the 1950s and 1960s» at the scholarly seminar of the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences.
In the late 1950s and 1960s Soviet photographers were tasked with visualizing a new and changing environment: After Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, photojournalists and photography theorists began to question the status of photography in the Soviet Union.
Far from simply an indexical tool, photojournalists began arguing that photography was in fact a Socialist Realist art form, akin to painting, sculpture, and literature. The resulting exchanges and debates about the role of photography, as a documentary and artistic media, and the creative possibilities afforded to photography based on these unique characteristics, defined discussions about photography for the remainder of the Soviet period.
Some prominent members of the photographic community began arguing that not only was photojournalism Socialist Realist art, but that the medium possessed unique features that placed it in a category of its own based on its duel artistic and documentary features. At the heart of these exchanges was the fundamental question, what exactly was a "Soviet" photograph? What shared characteristics defined the "Soviet" nature of an image? While photographers were unable to convince cultural authorities of the primacy of photography as a “high” art, this lecture explores how their deliberations about photography’s artistic and documentary properties helped to create a distinctly Soviet, or Socialist Realist, style of “artistic photojournalism.”
The seminar will take place on March 1 at 5 pm at Staraya Basmannaya 21/4, building L, room L-413.
We kindly ask our guests to order a pass to the building in advance at worldwar2@hse.ru
HSE students and staff should present their ID to enter the building.
The seminar will be held in English.