Screen - Dark Matter Archives

48 A low view point prompts a potash worker to ask.49How often do we see teacups that are bigger than a human head!Proletankoe Foco describes Langman's photograph 'Ahead with1040':A huge cornfield without fences and wich a combine harvester assmall as a flea. We see the strength of nature over the humanintellect and the human will which is expressed through controlover the machine. The Oktyabrists do not like the human wholeads the machine.By contrast, a photograph by ROPF member A Sajchet, 'He controlsfour workbenches', elicits this comment from a locksmith:In this photograph eJlerything is clear - no explanation isrequired. It is clear and sharp. one can recognise every screw andcog-wheel on the work bench.A Sajche[ He COPitroisFour WorkbenchesAgain, Sajchet's photograph 'Kindergarten on the New Life collectivefarm', described by ROPF colleague S Friedland:From the variety and multiplicity of collective life the author hastaken two elements: (1) The children's cribs and (2) the collectivewomen farme rs going to work. The generalisation of the two subjects,although different, is closely lin ked internally - the womengo to work and their children remain in reliable hands - and hasa convincing eff ect .Sajchet's photographs are indeed a model of expository clar ity (it isto be remembered that such photographs were being published ina context of a widespread illiteracy); elsewhere ROPF practiceconsisted most predominantly of conventionally 'straight', orequally conventionally 'artistic', depictions of the 'shock worker'as socialist hero - anticipating the principles of Socialist Realismoutlined by Zhdanov at the first congress of the Union of Soviet'Writers in 1934.A Sajche[ Kindergarten on the "NewLile' Collectil'e Farm-N MaksimovShockworker of the'Hammer and Sickle'FactoryClearly, the Oktyabr fraction photography programme was starklyirrelevant to the urgent propaganda needs of the first Five-YearPlan. In a statement of intent of 1930. the photographic sectjonof Oktyabr had rejected alike,the practice of AKh RR, tlleir demurely smiling pretty little faces,smoking chimneys, and the Kvass -sodden pat riot ism of workersuniformly shown with sickle and IWIn",er land! the bourgeois con-cept of 'new form ' and 'Leftist photography', which came to usfrom the West "the aesthetics of Mancel altd Moholy-Nagy'sabstract 'Leftist' photography,asserting that photography supersedes, 'the obsolete techniques ofold spa tial arts', Rodcheuko was nevertheless expelled fromOktyabr following the scandal caused by the publication of his