From the Photo-Series to Extended Photo-Observation Author(s): Sergei Tret'iakov Source: October, Vol.

118, Soviet Factography (Fall, 2006), pp. 71-77 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40368446 . Accessed: 16/05/2013 06:24
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FromthePhoto-Series to Extended Photo-Observation*

SERGEI TRET'IAKOV

them 1929 article "The Biography TreViakov's oftheObject"and transposed fromtheearlier into the Like "The mutatis discussion of narrative, mutandis, field of photography. " the "Ptolemaic" idealism the novel, of psychological oftheObject, whichdisputed Biography "Fromthe Photo-Series" challengedthe conceitof portraitureto provide a comprehensive relationsto society. And image of the individual withoutany indication of his productive thepossibilities thePhoto-Series" also liketheearlieressay,"From for a consequently explored theindividual, would situatehim and monumentalizing practicethat,insteadofatomizing thephoto-series and extended withinthesocialfabricof his day. For TreViakov, photo-obserthe individual the connections between vation wereabove all techniques for reestablishing in traditional Withinthemedium thatare obscured and thesocial environment portraiture. between this meant harmonizingthe discrepancy subjectand background. ofphotography, draws upon Osip Brik's 1928 "From thePainting to thePhoto-Series" On thiscount, "From an essayin whichBrikexposedthelatenthumanismofa linearperspective thePhotograph," and thenredistributes isolatesthem thatextracts setting, fromone another, objects fromtheir so individual objects structured themwithinan ideologically field: "Differentiating pictorial is not onlya technical, but also an ideological as tomake a pictorialrecord phenomeofthem we can represent non. . . . We need a methodwhereby [the] individual persona not in can capturehim together isolation,but in connectionwith other people. . . . Photography on theenvironment is and in such a mannerthathis dependence withthetotalenvironment "l The was toproducenot a portrait clearand obvious. of goal for bothBrik and TreViakov a picture theindividual, butrather subject. ofa collective

to ExtendedPhoto-Observation/' whichappeared in "FromthePhoto-Series A Day in Max AVpert and Arkadii Shaikhet's foto with Proletarskoe famous photo-essay its borrowed of a Moscow the Life Working-Class Family, manyof arguments from

* - k dlitel'nomufotonabliudeniiu," no. 4 (1931), pp. 20-43. Proletarskoe "Ot fotoserii foto, in Photography in theModern Era: European Documents 1. Osip Brik,"FromPaintingto Photograph," trans. and Critical 1913-1940,ed. Christopher JohnE. Bowlt(New York:Metropolitan Phillips, Writings, MuseumofArt,1989), pp. 230-31. Ltd.and Massachusetts Institute OCTOBER 118,Fall 2006,pp. 71-77. 2006 October ofTechnology. Magazine,

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Whereas Brikclaimed to thattheindividualsnapshot well-suited was particularly both the was not and moment thus his the environment, apprehend person photographed are two As he explainsin the there text, suitably comprehensive for TreViakov. following two the that are available to enhance ways montage contingent procedures snapshot's the record: thephoto-series The critical between and extended difference photo-observation. twois theelement time. While the a inventory ofpicof photo-series provides "quantitative" turesout of whichtheviewer a composite synthesizes imageof theobject, extended would makes the"qualitative" photo-observation perception ofa process. Theresult " to possible be a "time-image, And cinema.2 the term Deleuze used to describe Eisenstein fs employ indeed themethodological between Eisenstein and two collaboraTreViakov, longtime kinship cinemaand the thestructural between tors,should not be surprising given" affinities In "From the Eisenstein 's notion intellectual Photo-Series, photo-essay. of montage inspires TreViakov 's method the incommensurable and accidental and,by oftaking conjugatsnapshot " and significance /bbobshchenostiV. ing it temporally, givingit the"weight ofgenerality Without thisgenerality, thephotograph remains "atomized" phenomenon. just an isolated, But byincorporating a thedimension becomes a mode the ofcognition, oftime, photograph dialectical but a What TreViakov describes not an aesthetic here is image. just practice, medium formaterialist thought. *

In publishing this theeditors conTret'iakov, commentary byComrade sider itnecessary toindicate in advance their with several disagreement oftheauthor's in particular with hisassertion that theses, photography is taking theplaceofpainting. The editors willsubsequently a detailedcritique of Comrade provide Tret'iakov's erroneous claims. "The faceis themirror ofthesoul," idealist and generations art, proclaimed of painters mastered the technique of condensing the comprehensive imageof theentire into a face down all the facts ofhispsycholperson single bybreaking and habits intohiswrinkles, life, ogy, biography, profession, publicactivity, daily locks ofhair, and thezigzag ofhisprofile. eyecolor, there was no room for movement. Andwithin theportrait, itwas Naturally thesubject's dominant thatfoundexpression overeverything else. temperament One couldonlyspeculate aboutthekinds oftiesthat himintosociety integrated and abouttheextent to which he washimself a product ofhissurrounding environment. But thenagain,there weren't enthusiasts whospeculated about many thisanyway, forthey itessential be derived from thought onlythattheindividual
See "Thought 2. and Cinema," in Gilles 2: TheTime-Image, trans. Deleuze,Cinema HughTomlinson andRobert Galeta(Minneapolis: ofMinnesota Press, 1997), University pp. 156-73.

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FromthePhoto-Series

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someelemental thathe demonstrate somedriving emotion. passion, Clarifying and method ofhissociallaborseemedtedious and insignificant. thetype fortheone moment theidealist searched that would Furthermore, portrait in was "universal and eternal" the individual. what Hence the relation of express ofsaints to theiconicrepresentations whoare preserved thiskindofportrait for on thefacethatis removed Andhencetheexpression from all eternity. anyreal as wellas the pose of traditional an action, photographic portraits expression in no human other than"theactivity ofposing." that exists activity thisisolationfromthe surrounding This frozenness, this environment, is captured in a most face(and one that to a single ineffectual reduction "posed" - all ofthis is alsocharacteristic ofthemonument. at that) expression in the Parkof Culture Shock-Workers and A case in point:TheAvenue ofthe of thesubjects, theshapesof their we see onlythephysiognomies where Leisure, do we comprehend their coiffures. Butin no way nature as shockheadsand their of these for of or the shock-workers each theparticular us, workers, significance intheranks ofthebuilders ofsocialism. unite as foremost that them commonalities didit.The dialectical-materialist what didnorhowthey Itshows us neither they ofthereality himandas a force that surrounds as a product seestheperson method in him in a state of It examines contradiction. this that transforms flux, reality. is replacing and becoming the Andthis is exactly why painting photography in thehandsoftheproletariat: itis able to establish ofstruggle instrument active an active dialectical-materialist relation to theworld for foundations thetechnical and more than that is immeasurably in a way comprehensive painting. simpler and authors thatthephotograph wasan thought years ago publishers Many a book without looks artistic but to thegenuine "insult" book, today photographs descendant waswarmly welcomed at the Not longago Rembrandt's inauthentic. Whereas it'sutterly inconceivwasdriven thephotographer while door, away. today of the the photographer who takespictures able howwe could get bywithout and of our industrial of the launch takes who Five-Year Plan, giants, growth pictures and authentic outa great carries and thereby agitation [agitatsiiu through display of a tiny on a of a photograph forexample, Thejuxtaposition, village pokazom]. in which a has taken a later one little river with year glass building replaced putrid - suchstunning theobsoforce reconsider thevillage youtoradically juxtapositions a millennium in earlier times. for our ofa "human letenotion lifetime," century equals books such as Deutschland uber of individual photographs, Composedonly as Heartfield and Kurt allesby documentary emerge stunning Tucholsky John of capitalism that evidenceof the crimes of their indictments age, as concrete and in novels talented rivals themost expressivity, temperament, impact. It is no longerpossible to talk about warwitha singlepicture,be it a ofVereshchagin.3 or theskulls Delacroix
realistpainterwhose most famouswork, VasiliiVereshchagin(1842-1904) was a controversial 3. of skulls. TheApotheosis pyramid ofWar(1871), depicteda towering

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Both of these methodsof photographic the nextstep impactrepresent the isolated beyond snapshot. The "snapshot" all kindsof lifeshotin motion, whereposingis designates to If an absolute minimum. the theicon) monument, (the kept painterly portrait wasbased on stasisand universal is then the generalization, snapshot dynamic. Therein liesitscolossal ofmovement contribution. It extracts individual moments from thepresent ofevents stream without making peoplepose. Butthesnapshot has itsowninternal and contingency flaw: theuniqueness ofwhat itdepicts. does the a moment that is characOnlyrarely snapshot capture a that internal contradiction. moment reveals an essential teristically expressive, As a rule,snapshots are contingent. In orderto provide thecontingent gesit is and action with the of generality, and ture, expression, weight significance toenhancethemoment either or qualitatively. After comnecessary quantitatively a series of in that show the same different paring photographs phenomenon countries or in different we willselectan isolated, operations, contingent photoof a general, graphthatis among otherslike it, and make it representative and important In thesameway we can takeseveral characteristic, phenomenon. of the in And same but different of its snapshots object, development. phases surinstead ofa contingent of a even instead an then, apparition, episode, person facesbeforeus in all of the diverseconnectionsthatintegrate himwithhis in all of thediverse contradictions thathe overcomes environment, surrounding in thecourseofdeveloping.

Max AVpert andArakii Shaikhet. A Day in the Lifeofa MoscowWorkingClassFamily. 1931.PuMLshed inProletarskoe foto,no.4 (1931).

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From the Photo-Series

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thinscale [cheshuika] If one snapshottaken at random is a kind of infinitely or phothen serial photography that has been peeled offthe surfaceof reality, of one of dense lets us feel the true layers. reality's tomontage weight of our photo-chronicle resultsfromthe factthatit overwhelms The infelicity the spectatorwith an enormous quantityof these photographicscales haphazFor example, consider the the chroniclewithina totality. withoutunifying ardly, centerfolds in ourjournals thattell about construction projects.Because theyare that reinforces so rarely held together a core them,these centerfolds by principle of spare parts. are takento be eitherheaps of scrap metal or,at best,stockpiles - to be atomizedand to disappear fromthe spectaThe fateof these objects - is also shared by the portraits who all of the shock-workers tor's consciousness and are in no wayexplained look alike,who are photographedwithindifference, or connected to each other. Rodchenko alreadywrotein 1928 that it was necessaryto conApparently struct bycombiningdifferent portraits snapshotsof the same person.4 The serial pictureof the Filippovfamily produced by Soiuzfotois valuable of because it the its gives subject depiction enormous substance,forwe precisely see the person not as an individual, not in isolation,but as a particlein our active social tissue,connected bylittlerootsalong the mostdiverselines: the line of proexistence. The duction, that of the sociopolitical, the familiallines of everyday of the fluxthatwe in its cross-section value of thisphoto-biographical lies excerpt a family like manyothersamong us. call the lifeof the Filippovfamily,
whichwas forthe Snapshot," 's "Against the Synthetic 4. Reference to Aleksandr Rodchenko Portrait, Modern in Novyi in Phillips, in the no. 4 (1928), pp. 14-16; trans, Era,pp. 238-42. lef, Photography published

A Day in the Lifeofa MoscowWorkingand Shaikhet. AVpert inProletarskoe 1931.Published ClassFamily. foto,no.4 (1931).

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The method fortaking is correct. pictures Onlyitshouldhavebeen realized moreconsistently in itsdetails and more"meticulously," ifyouwill. Forexample, therewas no reasonto photograph in the streetcar that he takesafter Filippov and theninsert that into the series as if it were a work, photo morning tripto the when did not take the train to the while were factory Filippov factory they taking thepictures. ifthephotos ofthestreetcar were toshow itas ittypically Similarly, supposed wasno reasonto photograph whenitwashalf As we is,there know, today's empty. Moscow streetcar is stuffed tocapacity at that hour. thediscrepancy in thecapbetween thenumbers Theyshouldhavecaught tionbelowthesnapshot and theones in theappendeddocument that wasmeant to"confirm" them(thepurchase at thecoop and theinvoice). Andfinally, shouldnothaveincluded thesnapshot ofthetwogirls with they tennis whichis obviously as far traditions are rackets, and, posed photographic from of celebrities at fashionconcerned, indistinguishable snapshots bourgeois able resorts.

and Shaikhet. A Day in theLifeofa MoscowWorking-Class AVpert 1931.Published inProletarskoe foto,no.4 (1931). Family.

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Photo-Series From the

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whenwe considerthe problemthatthe "Filippov But all thisis rathertrifling And theinterest shownabroadforthisseriesdemonstrates that series"triesto tackle. forserialphotography. militant orientation we havefoundthecorrect journalistic fromthose livesof peowe should now expect to see photo-series Naturally [people from the Caucasus], and of ple on the collective farms,of natsmenov from variousbranchesof production. workers Serial photographydeliversa momentarycross-sectionthat cuts through that entangle the individual.Unlike depictions the entire skein of relationships we have had until now, serial photographygives us the sensation of dramatic progress. In particular,there was a very timelyphoto-series about a German workerliving under the conditions of the economic crisis. The photo-series in whichwe saw Filippov.5 in the same activities But clearly, we showedthisworker ourselvesto thesekindsof "monographic" should not restrict photo shoots. shouldnotbe random.It can be integrated within The sensationofmovement theworkof the photo-chronicle in of our photo shoot.Bygrounding theprinciples thisconstruction as a sinone can represent the dialecticof socialist construction, processofdevelopment. gle,integral The Filippovseriesis an initialincision.Nextwe can viewthisfamily through and change in theirconmomentof growth extended notingevery photo-observation, dition. And since this change in the Soviet proletariatis advancing boldly,the valunextyearof workwillallow us to collect an enormousamount of extremely forour materialabout the laws,obstacles,and pace of growth able and convincing life. socialist productionand everyday We are building according to plan, and we should also be photographing accordingto plan. thisis the method. The seriesand extendedphoto-observation:

AT fortheinternational as a pieceof Soviet Commissioned 5. community, pertand propaganda no. 38 (1931),under thetitle in theArbeiter IUustrierte "24 first Shaikhet's Zeitung, appeared photo-essay in AIZ,no. 48 Itwasfollowed tenissues later Arbeiterfamilie." Moskauer aus demLebeneiner Stunden a dayin thelife that documented a collectively-produced (1931), reportage Filipows," by"Diedeutschen German a "typical" oftheFournes, family. proletarian

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