Sovfoto was established in 1932 as the only agency to representSovietphotojournalism in America.[1][2] It continues today as a commercial entity Sovfoto/Eastfoto. Collections from itsarchive are held also atMacLaren Art Centre inBarrie, Canada which in 2001 was donated 23,116 vintagegelatin silver prints dating from 1936 to 1957,[3][4] whileUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst holds the Tass Sovfoto Photograph Collection, 1919–1963, the majority being from 1943–1963.[5]
Sovfoto agency was originally established by theUSSR in New York in the early 1930s to distribute Soviet press photography throughout North America.[4]
All were printed, and often retouched,[6] in the USSR with English captions as they were intended for a North American audience.[7][8] Associated Press and International New Services and other major wire agencies paid a subscription fee to license the material, and offered it to illustrated magazines likeLife,Time andNewsweek andLook, to newspapers,[9] school textbook publishers,[10] and also tocommunist-aligned and communist-sympathetic publications, as well as selling to theState Department and various branches of the Armed Forces as the only source of regular visual reportage on the Soviet Union.[4]
Three Sovfoto pictures appeared (credited to the agency) inMoMA's 1955 exhibition curated byEdward Steichen,The Family of Man. Sponsored by America's own propaganda unit theUnited States Information Agency, it toured the world and was attended by 9 million visitors. It was included in the Moscow trade fair atSokolniki Park, the scene of Soviet PremierNikita Khrushchev and United States Vice PresidentRichard Nixon's 'Kitchen Debate' over the relative merits of communism and capitalism.[11][12]
After World War II, Sovfoto continued, adding imagery from Eastern European countries of theCommunist bloc as well as China. The agency started doing business as Sovfoto/Eastfoto in the late 1940s, moving offices several times under a series of American owners, including Helen Black (at 11West Forty-second Street, New York City 18, then 15West 44th Street) up to 1952, Edwin S. Smith to 1964 (at 24West 45th Street), then Liuba Solov at 25West 43rd Street. Solov managed the business until 1974 when Leah Siegel took ownership, moving in 1987 to 225West 34th Street Suite 1505, and employing Victoria Edwards who bought the company in the early 1990s. Edwards’ son Vanya took over upon her retirement and is the current owner/manager.
As aCommunist bloc agency, Sovfoto came under suspicion during theMcCarthy era. When Sovfoto released photographs of purportedbiological warfare committed by the Americans, the then-owner Edwin Smith was brought before theHouse Un-American Activities Committee to testify on his role in their publication.[13] At the time of his ownership as ‘Foreign Principal’, theReport of theAttorney General to theCongress of the United States on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 as Amended June 1951, for the Calendar Year 1955, notes that ‘Propaganda photographs (for theU.S.S.R.) are distributed by Edwin S. Smith, doing business under the name of Sovfoto Agency’ as well as ‘propaganda material fromCommunist China’.[14] Smith (1891–1975) was owner and manager of Am-Rus Literary and Music Agency, also Sovfoto and Eastfoto Agency from 1952–64, and represented legations and press and photo agencies Mezhdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow;Czechopress, Prague; China Photo Service, Peking;Agerpress, Bucharest; Zentral Bild, East Berlin; Hungarian Review Photo Service (formerly Hungarian Bulletin), Budapest; Legation of theHungarian People's Republic; Czechoslovakian Embassy; Legation of thePeople's Republic of Rumania; Polish Embassy; Czechoslovak Life, Prague; Cartimex (previously Centrul de Librarii Si Difuzare a Cartii "IMEX"), Bucharest; andArtia, Prague. The agency received $40,872.75 from sale of photographs in 1955.[15]
Until the fall of the Communist/Soviet bloc, Sovfoto remained the exclusive legitimate source of news photography from the Communist countries and it continues to representITAR-TASS in Russia andXinhua in China and others, while maintaining the historical archive. The Agency continues to operate from 263 West 20th St. #3 New York 10011 under the management of Vanya Edwards.[16]
The Sovfoto archiv holds the largest collection of photographs ofStalinist USSR outside of the state archives in Moscow. Furthermore, it includes images of Russia from the time of theTsars, throughLenin,Stalin,Khrushchev,Gorbachev, andYeltsin, World War II andMilitaria, the space program,[17] and a wide range of areas from Soviet society. Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn, curator and author ofThe Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937[18] wrote:
For anthropologists, for example, the archive provides visual evidence; inRuth Benedict's study 'Child rearing in Eastern European Countries,' Sovfoto imagery showed the prevalence ofswaddling.[19]
The Sovfoto photographs present the state-sanctioned, propagandistic[6][20] promotion of the progress and achievements of communism. In 1950Newsweek generated controversy around a Sovfoto picture of 70-year old Prime MinisterStalin casting his ballot for the March 12 Soviet elections; they showed that a head shot of Stalin from years before had been 'simply pasted' into the news photo.[21] Conversely, in 1956,Stewart Alsop inThe Courier-Journal demonstrated how reliable information on Soviet weapons programs could be obtained from Sovfoto images. The magazineAviation Week was called toThe Pentagon for publishing 'top secret' photographs of flights over Moscow by the new Soviet heavy bomber, theBison, the existence of which had been denied as 'fake' by Secretary of DefenseCharles E. Wilson, to which charge theAviation Week editor protested that they had simply obtained the pictures from Sovfoto.[22]
Nevertheless, they also constitute historical record. WhenLillian Hellman was writing the screenplay forThe North Star she relied on Sovfoto location pictures for the recreation of Ukrainian cooperativeKamenetz Podolsk.[23]
At the outbreak of World War II, many Soviet photographers becamewar correspondents, incorporating the photographic invention of therevolutionaryavant-garde in documenting the lives and deaths of Soviet troops, conflict, destruction and Germanatrocities. Sovfoto coverage of the Red Army's advance produced by Russian photographers turned war correspondents arrived atAssociated Press offices in New York by radio from Moscow as early as August 1944. These were the first evidence of the Holocaust; one showing residents ofLublin surrounding a pit filled with bodies of those killed by the Germans who occupied the city; another, according to the Sovfoto caption accompanying it, showed: "The Lublin camp of annihilation. In their well-built cremation ovens, the Hitlerites daily burnt the bodies of those whom they tortured to death in the camp."[24] During theKorean War, Eastfoto images of AmericanPOW's distributed by Sovfoto led to the identification of at least two of the US combatants pictured.[25]
The archive contains images taken by many anonymous photographers, as well as foremost Soviet photographers, documenting a period of history in the twentieth century which has had a very lasting impact. After the crackdown of 1932, many of the Soviet Union's leading avant-garde photographers found that their only available means of expression was press photography.[26][27] The Sovfoto archive includes images from many Soviet photographers who have become historically important:
| Photographer | birth | death | work | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Alpert (Maks Al'pert) | 1899 | 1980 | for "Pravda", made portraits of major Soviet and many foreign politicians, military and writers; during theGreat Patriotic War was a TASS correspondent and Information Bureau in the rear and at the front, in a combat situation. His most famous photograph "Combat" became a symbol of the Soviet war. Postwar years contributed to various publications and was the lead photographer for the press agency "Novosti". | |
| Dmitri Baltermans | 1912 | 1990 | officialKremlin photographer, worked forIzvestia, picture editor ofOgonyok; inWorld War II, covered theBattle of Stalingrad, and the battles of theRed Army inRussia andUkraine. Twice wounded. "Grief", depicts village women as they search for the bodies of their loved ones after 1942Nazi massacre of Jews in Багерово (Baherove), near theCrimean city ofKerch.[28] | _Grief.png) |
| D. Samson Cernov | 1887 | 1929 | Balkan War and World War I 1912–18,Serbian Retreat. | |
| Mark Markov-Grinberg | 1907 | 2006 | first worked onSovyetski Yug ('Soviet South') 1925, freelancer forOgonyok, then in Moscow, on numerous trade union newspapers. | |
| Samary Mikhailovitch Gurary (Samarii Gurarii) | 1916 | 1998 | portrait of Stalin,Roosevelt andChurchill at theYalta Conference appeared on the front page ofPravda 13 Feb 1945 | |
| Boris Vsevolodovich Ignatovich | 1889 | 1976 | press photographer onBednota, appears inSovetskoe Foto,Sovremennaia arkhitektura,Radioslushatel andIlliustrirovannaia rabochaia gazeta. Cinematographer during 1930s. In WW2, Western and Bryansk fronts,Potsdam Declaration, military photographer until 1950 then worked forOgoniok,Pravda,Izogiz,Stroiizdat, andZhurnal mod. | |
| Yevgeny Khaldei | 1917 | 1997 | Dnieper Dam project and its worker heroAlexey Stakhanov, covered World War II throughout, including "Victory Banner over the Reichstag", liberation of Sevastopol, the storming of Novorossiysk,Potsdam Conference,Nuremberg trials | |
| Oleg Knorring | 1907 | 1968 | contributor to magazine Наши достижения ('Our achievements'), and other publications and during World War II for newspaperRed Star. |  |
| Nikolai Dzhemsovich Kolli (not to be confused withNikolai Kolli, architect) | 1894 | 1966 | USSR in Construction | |
| Vladimir Musinov | Vladimir Musinov authorised to photograph Stalin, in Moscow and travelling from Vladivostok to Middle Asia via the Arctic from 1941 to 1942.LIFE 29 Mar 1943 (p. 114) special edition on Russia, and in an article in the 11 Jan 1943 edition. Apprentice master to Dmitri Baltermans.[28] | |||
| Vladimir Savostyanov | 1903 | ? | J. Nehru and I. Gandhi in Moscow metro, 1955; Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Soraya Pahlavi at Exhibition of Economic Achievements, Moscow, 1956 | |
| Arkady Shaikhet | 1898 | 1959 | worked onOgonyok, a founder of Soviet Photo in 1926, contributed toUSSR in Construction, in WW2Battle of Stalingrad, liberation of Kiev, Ukraine. | |
| Shakhovskoy | work was collected byPhilippe Halsman | |||
| Major David Sholomovich | cameraman for theMoscow Newsreel Studios, he mastered the duties of gunner and navigator in order to fly to record thedive-bombing andstrafing of Nazi troops by Soviet planes. | |||
| Abram Petrowitch Shterenberg (or Sterenberg) | 1894 | 1979 | As a soldier he attended a school of art and design, worked in Red Army photographic department. Postwar in B. Kapustianskii’s photo atelier in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Professional photographer in Moscow and was active there as a photojournalist and portraitist, contributed to exhibition “Ten Years of Soviet Photography”, mostly portraits.[29] | |
| Viktor Antonovich Temin | 1908 | 1987 | from 1922 worked for Izvestia, photographingMaxim Gorky in 1929, expedition to the North Pole in 1930, Russian-Finnish War (1939–40),RIA Novosti in WWII, photographing theBattle of Moscow | |
| Alexander Uzylan | 1908 | 198? | staff photographer forIzvestia,Pravda andOgoniok magazine. During the Second World War, assigned to theBlack Sea Fleet ascorrespondent for theSoviet information Bureau. | |
| Alexander Vorontsov | 1919 | 1991 | photographs and film of rescue of children at the liberation of theAuschwitz-Birkenau camp by theRed Army, January 27, 1945[30][31] | |
| Boris Borisovich Zeitlin (a.k.a. Tseitlin) | "a fearless and indefatigable film-photographer."[32][33] | |||
| George Anatolievich 'Zelma' Zelmanovich | 1906 | 1984 | photojournalist onIzvestia,Ogonyok,Red Star 1920s and 30s; military photographer on "Izvestia" newspaper at the front in Moldavia, Odessa and Ukraine particularly during Battle of Stalingrad. After WW2, worked for "Ogonyok" magazine, and from 1962 for the agency "Novosti". |
