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Sovfoto was established in 1932 as the only agency to represent Soviet Union photojournalism in America. It continues today as a commercial entity Sovfoto/Eastfoto. Collections from its archive are held also at MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Canada which in 2001 was donated 23,116 vintage gelatin silver prints dating from 1936 to 1957, while University of Massachusetts Amherst holds the Tass Sovfoto Photograph Collection, 1919–1963, the majority being from 1943–1963.
Three Sovfoto pictures appeared (credited to the agency) in MoMA's 1955 exhibition curated by Edward Steichen, The Family of Man. Sponsored by America's own propaganda unit the United States Information Agency, it toured the world and was attended by 9 million visitors. It was included in the Moscow trade fair at Sokolniki Park, the scene of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and United States Vice President Richard Nixon's 'Kitchen Debate' over the relative merits of communism and capitalism.
For anthropologists, for example, the archive provides visual evidence; in Ruth Benedict's study 'Child rearing in Eastern European Countries,' Sovfoto imagery showed the prevalence of swaddling.Ruth Benedict (1967) 'Child rearing in Eastern European Countries,' in
The Sovfoto photographs present the state-sanctioned, propagandistic promotion of the progress and achievements of communism. In 1950 Newsweek generated controversy around a Sovfoto picture of 70-year old Prime Minister Joseph Stalin casting his ballot for the March 12 Soviet elections; they showed that a head shot of Stalin from years before had been 'simply pasted' into the news photo.'Paste-up job seen in Stalin photo,' Chattanooga Daily Times, Friday 24 Mar 1950, p.9 Conversely, in 1956, Stewart Alsop in The Courier-Journal demonstrated how reliable information on Soviet weapons programs could be obtained from Sovfoto images. The magazine Aviation Week was called to The Pentagon for publishing 'top secret' photographs of flights over Moscow by the new Soviet heavy bomber, the Bison, the existence of which had been denied as 'fake' by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, to which charge the Aviation Week editor protested that they had simply obtained the pictures from Sovfoto.Stewart Alsop, 'Intelligence Data Need Not Depend On Fair Spies,' The Courier-Journal Sat, Apr 14, 1956, p.8
Nevertheless, they also constitute historical record. When Lillian Hellman was writing the screenplay for The North Star she relied on Sovfoto location pictures for the recreation of Ukrainian cooperative Kamenetz Podolsk.Erskine Johnson, Poughkeepsie Journal Thursday 04 Mar 1943, p.14
At the outbreak of World War II, many Soviet photographers became war correspondents, incorporating the photographic invention of the revolutionary avant-garde in documenting the lives and deaths of Soviet troops, conflict, destruction and German atrocities. Sovfoto coverage of the Red Army's advance produced by Russian photographers turned war correspondents arrived at Associated Press offices in New York by radio from Moscow as early as August 1944. These were the first evidence of the Holocaust; one showing residents of Lublin surrounding a pit filled with bodies of those killed by the Germans who occupied the city; another, according to the Sovfoto caption accompanying it, showed: "The Lublin camp of annihilation. In their well-built cremation ovens, the Hitlerites daily burnt the bodies of those whom they tortured to death in the camp."Heinzerling, L., Daniszewski, J., Herschaft, R., & Associated Press. (2017). Covering tyranny: The AP and Nazi Germany 1933-1945 During the Korean War, Eastfoto images of American POW's distributed by Sovfoto led to the identification of at least two of the US combatants pictured.'Mother recognizes son in N. Korean POW photo,' Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Friday 22 Sep 1950, p.2
| + !Photographer !birth !death !work ! | ||||
| Max Alpert (Maks Al'pert) | 1899 | 1980 | for "Pravda", made portraits of major Soviet and many foreign politicians, military and writers; during the Great Patriotic War was a TASS correspondent and Information Bureau in the rear and at the front, in a combat situation. His most famous photograph "Combat" became a symbol of the Soviet war. Postwar years contributed to various publications and was the lead photographer for the press agency "Novosti". | |
| Dmitri Baltermans | 1912 | 1990 | official Kremlin photographer, worked for Izvestia, picture editor of Ogonyok; in World War II, covered the Battle of Stalingrad, and the battles of the Red Army in Russia and Ukraine. Twice wounded. "Grief", depicts village women as they search for the bodies of their loved ones after 1942 Nazi massacre of Jews in Багерово (Baherove), near the Crimea city of Kerch. | |
| D. Samson Cernov | 1887 | 1929 | Balkan War and World War I 1912–18, Serbian Retreat. | |
| Mark Markov-Grinberg | 1907 | 2006 | first worked on Sovyetski Yug ('Soviet South') 1925, freelancer for Ogonyok, then in Moscow, on numerous trade union newspapers. | |
| Samary Mikhailovitch Gurary (Samarii Gurarii) | 1916 | 1998 | portrait of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta Conference appeared on the front page of Pravda 13 Feb 1945 | |
| Boris Ignatovich | 1889 | 1976 | press photographer on Bednota, appears in Sovetskoe Foto, Sovremennaia arkhitektura, Radioslushatel and Illiustrirovannaia rabochaia gazeta. Cinematographer during 1930s. In WW2, Western and Bryansk fronts, Potsdam Declaration, military photographer until 1950 then worked for Ogoniok, Pravda, Izogiz, Stroiizdat, and Zhurnal mod. | |
| Yevgeny Khaldei | 1917 | 1997 | Dnieper Dam project and its worker hero Alexey Stakhanov, covered World War II throughout, including "Victory Banner over the Reichstag", liberation of Sevastopol, the storming of Novorossiysk, Potsdam Conference, Nuremberg trials | |
| Oleg Knorring | 1907 | 1968 | contributor to magazine Наши достижения ('Our achievements'), and other publications and during World War II for newspaper Red Star. | |
| Nikolai Dzhemsovich Kolli (not to be confused with Nikolai Kolli, architect) | 1894 | 1966 | USSR in Construction | |
| Vladimir Musinov | Vladimir Musinov authorised to photograph Stalin, in Moscow and travelling from Vladivostok to Middle Asia via the Arctic from 1941 to 1942. LIFE 29 Mar 1943 (p. 114) special edition on Russia, and in an article in the 11 Jan 1943 edition. Apprentice master to Dmitri Baltermans. | |||
| Vladimir Savostyanov | 1903 | ? | J. Nehru and I. Gandhi in Moscow metro, 1955; Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Soraya Pahlavi at Exhibition of Economic Achievements, Moscow, 1956 | |
| Arkady Shaikhet | 1898 | 1959 | worked on Ogonyok, a founder of Soviet Photo in 1926, contributed to USSR in Construction, in WW2 Battle of Stalingrad, liberation of Kiev, Ukraine. | |
| Shakhovskoy | work was collected by Philippe Halsman | |||
| Major David Sholomovich | cameraman for the Moscow Newsreel Studios, he mastered the duties of gunner and navigator in order to fly to record the Dive bomber and strafing of Nazi troops by Soviet planes. | |||
| Abram Petrowitch Shterenberg (or Sterenberg) | 1894 | 1979 | As a soldier he attended a school of art and design, worked in Red Army photographic department. Postwar in B. Kapustianskii’s photo atelier in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Professional photographer in Moscow and was active there as a photojournalist and portraitist, contributed to exhibition “Ten Years of Soviet Photography”, mostly portraits. | |
| Viktor Antonovich Temin | 1908 | 1987 | from 1922 worked for Izvestia, photographing Maxim Gorky in 1929, expedition to the North Pole in 1930, Russian-Finnish War (1939–40), RIA Novosti in WWII, photographing the Battle of Moscow | |
| Alexander Uzylan | 1908 | 198? | staff photographer for Izvestia, Pravda and Ogoniok magazine. During the Second World War, assigned to the Black Sea Fleet as correspondent for the Soviet information Bureau. | |
| Alexander Vorontsov | 1919 | 1991 | photographs and film of rescue of children at the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army, January 27, 1945 | |
| Boris Borisovich Zeitlin (a.k.a. Tseitlin) | "a fearless and indefatigable film-photographer." | |||
| George Anatolievich 'Zelma' Zelmanovich | 1906 | 1984 | photojournalist on Izvestia, Ogoniok, Red Star 1920s and 30s; military photographer on "Izvestia" newspaper at the front in Moldavia, Odessa and Ukraine particularly during Battle of Stalingrad. After WW2, worked for "Ogonyok" magazine, and from 1962 for the agency "Novosti". |
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