Total Red: Photography

The exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution with a selection of works by leading Soviet photographers from the museum collection. In addition to a presentation of each photographer’s individual work, the selection also allows reflection on the dramatic events that unfolded in the Soviet Union’s early years.

                   Alexander Rodchenko, Girl with Leica Camera, 1934

The 1917 Russian Revolution, which ended Tsarist rule and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, had a huge impact on all forms of avant-garde art during this period, including photography. Members of the avant-garde artist group October, led by Alexander Rodchenko, sought to create a novel type of vision that would correspond to radical political awareness. Among these photographers, active mostly in the period immediately after the revolution, are Rodchenko, Yakov Khalip, Alexander Ustinov, and Semyon Fridliand, as well as director Sergei Eisenstein, whose film October, co-directed with Grigori Alexandrov, is on view in the exhibition. These artists preferred innovative visual means – such as unusual viewpoints, abstracting close-ups, extreme shooting angles, and acute crops – that evoke startling associations and require viewers to decipher the images.

                             Alexander Rodchenko, Stairs, 1930

           Alexander Rodchenko, Gathering for a Demonstration, 1928

However, during the 1930s, with the exacerbation of the totalitarian aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship, artistic liberties were brought to a halt. In those years, photography was considered the most effective medium for agitation and propaganda. The style adopted to that end was Socialist Realism, with its clear language easily intelligible by the masses. Soviet photography took up the cause, producing photojournalistic documentation of historic occasions, sporting events, parades, and factories – all images that glorified the achievements of the Soviet regime. Such is, for example, the work of Emmanuil Evzerikhin, Ilya Narovlyansky, and Max Alpert, as well as that of Oleksander Dovzhenko, director of Earth, also here on show.

                                      Georgi Zelma, Moscow, 1937

                           Georgi Zelma, The Opera Buran, 1939

Many of the images exalt the proletariat and eulogize the hastened industrialization and collectivization processes underway at the time. This is ideological art that has great faith in its power to effect change in society. Yet in producing it, these photographers overlooked – unknowingly or intentionality – the horrors that were part and parcel of the processes transforming their country. Unsurprisingly, most of the photographers active in those years were members of the Communist Party. In 1932 works by many avant-garde photographers were shown forthe last time – and following the Great Purge of 1937, directed against anyone thought to undermine Stalin’s rule, all such works were removed from public galleries. Many artists, including Socialist Realists, fell victim to purges and show trials, and were finally executed or sent to Gulags. In retrospect, despite the stylistic and ideological dictates, the photographs produced in the Soviet Union until the 1950s are wonderfully original. The impact of modernist avant-garde was so dramatic and revolutionary that its traces are evident even in the enlisted art of the time.

       Emmanuil Evzerikhin, Remnant of a Peaceful Past, Stalingrad, 1942

              Yevgeny Khaldei, Raising a Flag over the Reichstag, 1945

                  Alexander Rodchenko, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1924

The photographs in the exhibition are silver prints from the collection of Tel Aviv Museum of Art, gift of Howard Schickler, David Lafaille, and an anonymous donor through the American Friends of Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Felicja Blumental Gallery, Marc Rich and Gabrielle Rich Wing Main Building

October 26, 2017 – February 10, 2018

curator: Raz Samira