Path and Goal of Amateur Photography in the GDR

Gerhard Henninger, Die Fotografie 8/1960

The amateur photography movement of the GDR has experienced a heightened social status. This has become clear since last year, especially since the preparation of the second Bifota and the discussion about its principles. How has this status expressed itself?

First: Under the new social conditions created through socialist organization, it has become possible to lead the practices of amateur photographers beyond mere hobby. Hundreds of thousands camera owners take photographs today, for pleasure, relaxation, and recreation - and we welcome this hobby. Yet we do not stop there. The immediate cause for many camera owners to join a photo group is their wish to learn to photograph »better.« Many wish to hear about experiences, methods, and recipes to make it easier to take photographs. Our groups must meet those demands, must pay attention to teaching techniques of photographic work.

Yet we recognize the possibility of an artistic character of photography, and we consciously reject the reduction of photography to an exclusively technical procedure. As such, we make it possible for our groups and clubs not merely to teach technical capabilities, but to lead many so called »snap-shot photographers« to a laymen's artistic practice. It is necessary to convince the advice-seeking »snap-shot photographer« in our groups, that good photography does not only consist of chemical recipes and good cameras, but also of a conception of a content, of an ability, in order to connect photographic seeing and social seeing and to recognize and design the essence of an appearance. Each amateur faces an aesthetic problem when he first looks through a camera and chooses an object, whether he is conscious of it or not. Hence we do not fight against the hobby. Instead, we build on it in order to use existing pleasures and excitement to awaken and foster dormant talents and capabilities for artistic creation in each human being.

Second: The heightened social status finds expression in the immediate mass effects of amateur photography. Photography is able to reach large groups of people quickly and intelligibly - in small and large exhibitions in factories, villages, and cities, as well as in factory- and village-newspapers. Under our new social conditions, photography, for the first time, completely serves to communicate and propagate the great humanist ideas of peace, of friendship among the peoples, and of human happiness. The direct consequence for the practice of our amateur groups is to enhance the amateur's responsibility for the meaning and effect of his images. The less the amateur takes photographs just for himself, the more he takes photographs to communicate his thoughts, feelings and opinions, his experiences and perceptions, the more he lets others participate in them and generates similar thoughts and sensations. The stronger and faster that his creations grow out of the private and individual sphere, the stronger and faster his artistic effort and lay-artistic practice will become socially effective.

In its social effects, our amateur photography becomes an organic component of political work with the masses. Hundreds of amateur photographers now work to give artistic form to the life of the comrade in the diaries of the socialist brigades. Hundreds of amateur photographers have already begun to shape the socialist reorganization of agriculture in photo-artistic terms. They do so through their participation in village chronicles.

Hence amateur photography fulfills a double function: By means of art photography, it creates an excitement for our new life in all its variety, it shows the new socialist man. Furthermore, as photography is consciously practiced artistically by hundreds of thousands of workers, it educates these people, gives them true standards for the beautiful and artistic, develops their faculties of aesthetic perception and judgment, facilitates the reception and understanding of great works of art.

Third: The more we include so-called beginners in the artistic process, the more we get them to capture and photo-artistically shape the essence of our life, the smaller the principal difference will be between their practice and that of the advanced photoartist, the more we begin to bridge the seemingly unsurpassable gap between both, despite their different levels. As the recent exhibitions have proved, the number of amateurs exhibiting highest achievements is rising. It would be wrong today to still regard amateur photography as a type of photography which is by principle of lower quality. How often are we inclined to sneer at an amateur who considers an image beautiful which should be rejected as kitschy! Of course we have to overcome kitsch, of course we are not allowed to give in to the »bad average.« Yet we often forget that to overcome the after-effects of the capitalist past and the conscious deterioration of the artistic abilities of the masses, aesthetic education is a process that must be promoted and supported with determination.

Under the influence of the arrogance of circles isolated from the life

of the people, we have in the past years not paid attention to several key questions, which are of importance to the practice of our group work. I am thinking here for example of the question, what an amateur should take photographs of. Some friends still think that they must turn to far fetched themes and subjects which at some point were praised as art - under the influence of the intellectual acrobatics of a few so-called artists who mistakenly describe themselves as »modern.« This caused virtual epidemics among our amateurs in the last years: the puddle and cobblestone motifs, the laundry line motifs, the window pane motifs etc. We forgot that it is best to begin with the artistic forming of those themes and subjects that the amateur can quickly learn, can best judge and evaluate: his own practice within production, his life in the brigade, within the family, his holidays, his recreation, his sports. Many new social phenomena are developing especially in this area, for example, socialist naming and marriages, brigade evenings and cooperative meetings. Given these conditions, is it right to condemn the »family photograph«? A few years ago, the exhibition The Family of Man already pointed to the great possibilities which can be expanded significantly under the new social conditions of socialist life.

A third characteristic of our new amateur movement, then, is its close connection and transition between high »art photography« and lay-artistic photography. Only the conscious and determined advancement of amateur photography, its distribution and rise of status, nourish high photo-artistic achievements.

Fourth: In the spirit of the Bitterfeld conferences - parallel with all other artistic areas - our amateur movement leads to a broad mass movement of artistic creation of the people, which gives all talents the possibility of their full development. The occupation with art becomes an essential characteristic of the new socialist human being freed from capitalist exploitation. Already today, the worker and cooperative farmer who take photographs stand next to the writing, painting, singing, and music making worker. What a principal difference to the petit-bourgeois amateur movement of earlier decades, which often drifted off into clubbiness, or which regarded photography and hobbies as an escape from an unsympathetic present. Our new creations serve to render our present and our life even more beautiful, serve to connect us to our life even more tightly. As such, our amateur movement strives for a high goal, which would have been unheard of under earlier social conditions in Germany. Here lies the national significance of our new amateur movement.