The popular illustrated magazine Ogonek played a decisive role in the development of early Soviet photojournalism. Under the editorial leadership of Mikhail Kol’tsov, Ogonek nurtured the first generation of Soviet photographers, established networks of photo-correspondents and photo agencies, and actively developed Soviet photographic culture. This lecture will detail Ogonek’s role in establishing the basic infrastructure for modern photojournalism in the Soviet Union, discuss three photographers (Arkadii Shaikhet, Semen Fridliand and Elizaveta Mikulina) as representative of the first generation of photographers nurtured by the magazine, and examine an exhibition of Ogonek photographers in 1930 at the House of the Press (Moscow) and part of which subsequently toured Great Britain. Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Shaikhet and Fridland asserted the importance of photography to socialist construction due to its ability to reach even the illiterate, noting that “given the very diverse cultural level of the audience, the photo-reporter is obliged to speak in a clear photographic language.” They further argued for a Soviet photojournalism that would be explicitly photographic, formally innovative, and attentive to the demands that socialist construction placed on subject matter.
© Semen Fridliand, “The Great Comintern Speaks,” Ogonek, 1927, no. 15. // Фото Эрики Вульф