The Russian Revolution and photography

The tragic paradoxes of canonisation

Bibliographic Data

ID3296183
AuthorsB Fowler (0000-0001-7224-2699, University of Glasgow, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume72
Issue4
Pages756-772
Publication date2024-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380261241258581
OpenAlexW4403216292
LanguageEN
References cited16

Bourdieu (et al.'s) Photography contends that it is the fate of photography to remain for ever 'a middlebrow art'. This is partly because its technological character is held to be inimical to canonisation as a high art-form, but also because it lacks a class willing to invest time in its reception. Here, I argue, Bourdieu has been proved wrong: photography has now been consecrated, including, ironically, his own photography. Support for this claim is drawn from the field of art in Russia. The Russian Revolution and the Constructivist movement brought into the public gaze artists such as Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Valentina Kulagina, who saw photography as one of a series of genres that might renovate the social order and transforms the public's habitual perception. Photography became central in the movement to replace Academic art and thus a key route to photography's consecration. However, as Benjamin pointed out there is a danger of decontextualising and 'eternalising' the photographs or photomontages that make the transition into the art museum. They may remain neither the art of the community from which they emerged, nor be recognised as an expressive resource for later dominated groups; instead such canonised works may become a status adornment of those with cultural capital

Art · Photography · Sociology · Visual arts · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Photography and Visual Culture

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