A Photographer for the Factory: Social Roles of Photographers and the Cultural Imagination of the Industrial Age

This project centers on the narratives of professional and amateur photographers whose lives and work were connected with industrial production, particularly in the Donbas region. These are the life stories of photographers who worked at enterprises and in the press in industrial cities and towns. These materials shed light on the broader issue of Soviet history, such as the role of professionals in creating the ideological Soviet project and the forms and limits of their negotiation, adaptation, and influence on the representations that dominated the public space. Throughout their stories, the photographers also focus on issues of resources — monetary, human, as well as connections and information, notably in professional communities, clubs, and groups that shaped the imagination of the possible (and dreams of the unattainable) in the development of photographic practice. Donetsk, Luhansk, Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, and Krasnyi Luch are the cities featured in the photographers' stories.

The project explores how photographers reflect on their attitude to the "black legend" of "Donbas" as an industrial region, their attempts to deconstruct, fight, or ignore those highly critical and, at times, ethically sensitive images of the region that have become widespread since Perestroika.

Iryna Sklokina aims to analyze these stories from the viewpoint of the social history of a professional group, as well as from the perspective of the history of imagination and images of a particular region that was in the spotlight of the visual media — first as a space of success and progress, and later as a place for social and environmental crisis and hostilities.

The project is a continuation of a previous study that resulted in the book "Labor, Exhaustion and Success: Company Towns of the Donbas" (ed. by V. Kulikov and I. Sklokina). One of the book's chapters is devoted to the history of visual representation of the industrial Donbas in photography from the nineteenth century to the present day. Based on materials from all-Union ("Sovetskoe Foto") and regional periodicals ("Zaboy"), as well as materials from the Central State Audiovisual and Electronic Archive in Kyiv, Iryna Sklokina traces not only the ways of representing the region (for exoticization, heroization, social criticism) but also the functioning of photography in various contexts (press, postcards, honor boards, wall newspapers, etc.). To purchase the book, please, visit our online-store.

Related:

• The Project "Un/Archiving the Post/Industry" 
• The collection of the Pokrovsky Historical Museum, which includes a photo of Mykola Bilokon
• Iryna Sklokina, "Culture vs. Industry: Professional Photographers in the Company Towns of the Donbas," presentation at the conference "Soviet 'Self' and Soviet 'We.' Between Ideology and Reality", Kyiv, June 24-26, 2021

Credits

Cover Image: A Young Man with a Camera, 1958 // "Family Album" collection // Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History