This Russian photo magazine published groundbreaking art under 70 years of Soviet rule
‘Sovetskoe Foto’ was attacked by Stalin, but kept going
The role of photography in Soviet society was a hotly contested subject — artistic expression, or tool for uplifting the proletariat — and for roughly 70 years, the debate played out on the pages of Sovetskoe Foto. From 1926 to 1997, the magazine—ostensibly a trade rag where photography hobbyists could learn about new products, DIY lighting techniques, and darkroom chemistry—was also a venue for superb design layout and elegant picture editing.
In the early years Sovetskoe featured the work of international photographers alongside avant-garde Russian artists like the constructivist Aleksandr Rodchenko, who pushed photography forward in fundamental ways, shattering existing paradigms through aggressive composition and experimental angles. But Stalin’s purges brought photographic aesthetics under fire in the 1930s. Rodchenko was charged with having an elitist Western style and dismissed as “formalist.” His contemporaries in the Russian Association of Proletarian Photo Reporters, however, were celebrated for their use of photography as a “a weapon for the socialist reconstruction of reality.”
Sovetskoe ceased publication between 1942 and 1956 due to World War II and its aftermath. And though the emphasis of the state-backed publication was officially “content over form,” this did not preclude the continued use of compelling photography and layout, even if the emphasis was mostly on monumental depictions of war and industry, idealized Soviet lives, and technology. After the war, the magazine again began featuring more experimental reportage and, especially, amateur photography until it ceased publication in 1997. By then Sovetskoe’s title was a little out of date, and online publications would soon be taking its place.
