Concerning the significance of the traditions of German Workers' Photography

Gerhard Henninger, Die Fotografie 1/1966

The development of a socialist conception of art photography in the German Democratic Republic, as begun by the Central Commission of Photography in the GDR since the First Bitterfeld Conference in 1959, must be seen in the larger context of the formation of a socialist photo-art in Germany. Its beginnings go back to workers photography and its struggle against fascism and militarism. Only in this way can one adequately judge the national and historical significance of our daily activities. Only in this way can we answer correctly the question about the new quality of our activities and the question which traditions we should continue. In the last years, the Central Commission of Photography was right in paying more attention to the progressive traditions within the history of photography. On the second as well as on the third conference of the GDR Friends of Photography, attention was drawn to the significance of German workers photography. The third Central Conference stated: »Part of the qualification and expansion of our activities is also that we make known to a larger degree, learn from and appreciate the best pictorial achievements of the past, of the humanist bourgeois photographers and especially of the worker photographers.« Yet such an undertaking had to confront a basic difficulty: Aside from minor beginnings, there are no investigations and representations of the history of photography from the Marxist-Leninist point of view. Until very recently, GDR publications also uncritically repeated bourgeois research. This becomes particularly clear in the treatment and evaluation German worker photography of the 1920s. It was represented as an episode, a branch in the development of bourgeois photography. Its principal difference to bourgeois amateur photography was ignored. Photography suddenly achieved a wide distribution during the twenties with the development of the small format camera. Until then, even amateur photography had to be understood as the photography of well-off laymen. With the development of the (much cheaper) small format camera, amateur photography increasingly became truly a »photography of the people.« That is, amateur photography became possible for the first time for the laymen among the people, especially for those from the working class. As such, amateur photography became a means of the class struggle of the proletariat, a part of the »new struggling era of the workers' culture movement.« Workers' organizations consciously used it. Supported by the KPD [German Communist Party], the first worker photography organizations were founded. In 1921/22, the magazine Soviet-Russia in Images first reported with images of the Socialist October Revolution. In 1922, the Workers Illustrated Newspaper (AIZ) appeared in Germany. For the first time amateur photographers from the working class were given the possibility to consciously use and popularize the image in their class struggle. (One cannot forget that until then, all photography organizations and magazines were owned by the bourgeoisie and propagated their thoughts). During the first Reichs Conference of worker photographers in Erfurt in 1927, the German Association of Worker Photographers (VdAFD) was founded. The magazine The Worker Photographer appeared. These are the exact words of the program of the worker photographers: »The photograph is an indispensable means of propaganda and enlightenment for the proletarian class struggle. In the course of the struggle of the international working class, a unification of worker photographers has become necessary. This is because the capitalist press uses photographic techniques via a flood of illustrated magazines to politically influence the masses and diminish their intellectual growth.

The most important tasks of the Association of Worker Photographers are:

1. Education and practical training of all members in all aspects of

photographic techniques.

2. Political education of all members, so that they may understand how

to use the camera effectively in the proletarian class struggle.

3. Cooperation with proletarian cultural organizations.

4. Influencing and enlightening the broad strata of the people by means of image propaganda in all areas of the political, educational, and cultural struggle.

5. Support of all tasks of the proletarian press through continuous visual reports.

6. Organization of public photography exhibitions in connection with

propaganda events.

7. Production and screening of their own slide series.

8. Correspondence between and exchange of image portfolios between

the local groups.

9. Collaboration with the magazine The Worker Photographer.

10. Creation of specific film groups within the most important local groups.

11. Expansion and maintenance of international connections. Support of

all tasks of the International Office.«

As such, worker photographers differ in principle from the opinions and orientation of the bourgeois amateur photography once common. They attempted to capture the typical situations of reality. Dr. Berthold Beiler justly notes that their pictures frequently were, and did not want to be more than, representations of aesthetic appearances. There were, however, also exposures which paved the way to an artistic image. In 1931, for example, the »Interest Group for Worker Culture« stated: »He (the worker photographer) must certainly understand the technique, must know the limits and particular advantages of his medium. He must isolate the visible object from everything random and confusing. He must see this object as a unity, must be familiar with the laws of contrast and balance. The worker photographer has the task to visually capture the true face of the working class, to produce photographic documents of the situation of the oppressed proletariat. A new chapter in the history of amateur photography began when the working class consciously used the camera as a means of class struggle. It began when worker photographers for the first time consciously used the camera as a means of aesthetic insight, when they openly sided with social progress in political and ideological battles. It was not simply that the small image format photography initiated this new period, but the fact that amateur photography was consciously used by the working class. However, the beginning of worker photography did not only initiate a new period of amateur photography. Following the violent disruption during the fascist period in Germany in the thirties, the beginning of worker photography also initiated a development which has achieved a new quality in the GDR, under its new social conditions of the construction of socialism and the rulership of the working people. During the coming months, it will be necessary to become fully conscious of this. It will be necessary to pay adequate attention to the discovery and maintenance of the traditions of worker photography, as to the progressive traditions of photography in general.