All Eyes on Russia: Margaret Bourke-White&#x27;s Early Soviet Photographs

Johnson, Josie Rose

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Year:: 2020
Contributor:: Johnson, Josie Rose (creator); Nickel, Douglas (Advisor); Shaffer, Holly (Reader); Sichel, Kim (Reader); Brown University. Department of History of Art and Architecture (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Periodicals; United States; Photography; Russia; Photobooks; Soviet Union; interwar; Women artists; Photojournalism; Propaganda; Newspapers; Photomurals
Extent:: xxiii, 570 p.

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Abstract:: In 1930, American photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) traveled to the Soviet Union on her first trip abroad. Her auspicious visit occurred during a moment of improving Soviet-American relations and increased experimentation with photography as a mass medium. Despite her self-proclaimed ignorance of Soviet life, lands, and politics, Bourke-White capitalized on these favorable conditions and returned twice more in 1931 and 1932, creating a suite of images that would be published and exhibited extensively across the United States and around the world. This dissertation examines the production and dissemination of Bourke-White’s Soviet photographs through various channels. Through close study of these photographic objects alongside rich archival records from Bourke-White and her broad circle of contacts, I situate these photographs between the American traditions of pictorialist photography and documentary photography, on the one hand, and their supposed political and stylistic opposites of the Russian Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism on the other. This survey reveals how Bourke-White’s striving for stylistic innovation and political neutrality left her photographs open to a wide variety of interpretations as they traversed disparate ideological and aesthetic contexts. Organized chronologically, each chapter focuses on a different photographic medium from this body of work. Chapter One examines how American and Soviet magazines reframed Bourke-White’s Soviet photographs to serve different political readings. Chapter Two details the creation and reception of Bourke-White’s first book, Eyes on Russia (1931), explaining how she and her audiences primarily conceived of the book as artistic and apolitical. Chapter Three turns to newspapers, centering on Bourke-White’s six-part series on Soviet life in the New York Times (1932), to illustrate her increasing involvement in political activity. Chapter Four uncovers the troubled histories of Bourke-White’s final Soviet projects from this period, each released in 1934: a film, photomurals, and a deluxe print portfolio. Each of these three projects became mired in issues related to production costs, public accessibility, perceived political meanings, and minimal returns on investment. In the Conclusion, I consider the complex agency of both the photographs and the photographer in constructing and preserving history from the 1930s into the post-Soviet era.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2020

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Citation

Johnson, Josie Rose, "All Eyes on Russia: Margaret Bourke-White's Early Soviet Photographs" (2020). History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:szfr5ujz/

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History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the History of Art and Architecture department.
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All Eyes on Russia: Margaret Bourke-White's Early Soviet Photographs