Concerning the Question of Socialist Realism in Photography

Dr. F. Herneck, Die Fotografie 8/1960

In Lessing's Emilia Galotti, the painter Conti deplores the fact that one cannot paint directly with one's eyes, because much is lost on the long way from eye through arm to brush. According to Lessing's opinion, here presented through Conti, the eye of the artist is of central importance to the visual arts: Raphael would have been the greatest painting genius, even if he had unfortunately been born without hands.

The opposition of eye and hand, which plays a significant role in the classical visual arts, is largely suspended in the photographic arts. The photographer is indeed able to paint directly with his eyes - a fact that is essential in evaluating photography. Photography is a way of practically appropriating reality, a means of knowing and changing the world. Art, according to Helmholtz, means to »translate« nature, not simply to copy it. To this end, one has to choose that which is generally significant, and eliminate that which is not essential and accidental. The question whether photography can be art has to be answered based on its ability to typologize. Several artistic achievements of famous photographers - from D.O. Hill to Helmar Lerski - have long proven, that photography is art.

A realistic art of photography that consciously uses all means of photographic typologizing - like the choice of vantage point, lighting, focus, aperture, blurred movements, etc. - can only develop in a two front battle: in the battle against formalism and naturalism. The battle against formalism, as expressed in so-called subjective photography and other expressions of the decay of late bourgeois society, is a form of ideological class struggle. Formalism means the renunciation of representational content. Subjective photography, as all other formalist pseudo-art, denies the epistemological character of artistic creation. By disregarding content, it necessarily leads to the destruction of photographic form. Formalism clearly fulfills a reactionary class function, in photography as well as in the visual arts. However, it is remarkable that the representational character of photography makes its misuse for formalist experiments more difficult. Hence subjective photographers are forced to resort to »photographic« means, that is, to certain tricks of mechanical-chemical follow-up processes.

The danger of naturalism has its roots in certain idiosyncrasies of photography that make it possible for anyone to represent a segment of reality with documentary truthfulness: without any typologization, with everything unessential and trivial. If a photographer does not use, or does not know how to use the means of typologization, his photograph will be nothing but a mere reproduction of reality, a kind of blue-print of nature. It will not be a translation of nature. Goethe poignantly defined naturalism as a way of representing which repeats the spelling of the letters of nature, as it were, which only doubles nature without bringing us any further. By means of its mechanical perfection, photography undoubtedly facilitates a naturalistic repetition of the spelling of nature. It would however be wrong and damaging to see naturalistic representation as the essence of photography.

Unlike formalism, naturalism in photography has no specific class basis. It does however fulfill equally negative social functions, mainly because naturalism hinders and stands in the way of a realistic, that is, a typologizing photographic art, and because it feeds into old prejudices against photography. For these reasons, naturalism must be fought against as an imitation of nature devoid of ideas. It must be fought against as decisively as formalism, which consciously distorts and slanders reality. Realism as a method of artistic creation means to reflect life truthfully. Since truth is always concrete, that is also bound to class, there can be no »timeless« realistic representation of social reality. Instead, realism is always bound to specific social foundations. Critical bourgeois realism and socialist realism are of utmost significance to our time.

Critical bourgeois realism is the creative way of progressive bourgeois photographers. Their work is characterized by a ruthless criticism of the social defects of the imperialist orders of society. The critical realists among the photographers fight with the weapon of photography against militarism and war, against social exploitation and political oppression. Essential to critical bourgeois realism in this context is that, despite all critique of bourgeois society, the bourgeois class point of view is not abandoned with respect to essential questions. Outstanding representatives of critical-realistic creation in photography are photographers like Cartier-Bresson and some other members of the Magnum-Group. The Interpress-Photo 1960 from France, Italy, Holland, and especially Japan showed excellent examples of critical bourgeois realism in photography.

Socialist realism in its highest development of realistic artistic creation means the enhancement and dialectical »sublation« of critical bourgeois realism with its limits and obstacles based on class - while at the same time preserving and developing its highest artistic achievements. The socialist-realist creative method necessarily originated in the struggle of the rising working class. It first developed in the area of literature: Maxim Gorki's novel The Mother is regarded as the first work of socialist realism in literature.

In this respect, it is essential that socialist realism is based on the scientific world views of Marxism and Leninism and that it includes a conscious support of the struggling working class, for socialism and communism. In all areas of art including photography, the socialist-realist creative method posits the humanist as well as the revolutionary task not only to mirror reality truthfully in its progressive development, but to contribute as well to the transformation and education of man in the spirit of international understanding and peace. For the socialist realist artist the task of art, to understand the world, is inseparably connected with its function, to change the world. Examples of socialist-realist photographic art were shown at the second Bifoto in the fall of 1959 (with outstanding photographs from the Soviet Union, from China, Hungary, and other socialist countries) and at the Interpress-Foto in 1960, with extraordinarily impressive, realist pictures, from the GDR, among others (Rudi Hesse's photograph Peace and Friendship with all Peoples is a noteworthy masterpiece).

In order to support the development of the socialist realist creative method among GDR photographers, what appears most important is photographic seeing and photographic typologizing, that is, to choose the typical and to learn to eliminate the untypical. Furthermore, the internal laws of photography must be obeyed and their aesthetic autonomy must be stressed. Any borrowing from the fine arts harms photographic creation. Finally, as a precondition for the proper use of photography in the service of social progress, it is necessary to gain ideological clarity. Work in photography clubs is frequently limited to strictly technical dark room practices. Yet in the context of discussions of images, ideological, aesthetic, and political questions should be addressed. All photographic work must obtain a solid theoretical and political basis. Only then will our photographers be able to serve the construction of socialism. The fears of mere theorizing, expressed here and there, are unfounded: here, too, some words by Lessing point into the right direction: »The thinking artist is worth so much.«