A Body of Propaganda Studying Ukrainian Practices

9. 5. 2018

from the family archive of Svitlana Kulinich, 1936

The human body and corporeality have rarely been an object of philosophical research. One reason is that human studies have focused on the concepts of spirit, soul, mind and reflection, i.e. on the processes which are visually invisible, yet concentrated in a physical shell. It might be connected with the fact that the body occupies a place in-between a subject of cognition (personality) and mind (process) that cannot exist beyond a body, and, thus, a body cannot act as a "pure" object.

However, in the discourse of a particular historic epoch, the body and corporeality have always represented social and cultural processes happening in that specific historical period. The history of the body – in particular, problematization of the categories of body, corporeality, and sexuality – reflected major cultural, political, and economic trends. The history of the body is the history of an epoch.

As noted, the body occupies a place in-between a subject of cognition (personality) and mind (process); at the same time, the body is also an instrument to reach essential goals, from personal survival to social manipulation. The Modern Period produced an ultimate manifestation that the process of activity is the essence and the specificity of human life. In the spirit of his epoch, Karl Marx said, "Humans really begin to distinguish themselves from other animals when they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation." The new philosophy formed new trends in everyday life. A cult was made of an industrious, healthy person. The physical culture movement promoted "holistic, well-balanced development of human personality and upbringing of a new man." It "balanced spiritual riches, moral purity, and physical perfection." Thus, the idea of a "new man" in Nazi Germany, which promoted physical fitness and physical education, as well as the propaganda of a healthy body in the Soviet Union, aimed at controlling the social body per se. A new image was formed, widely used, and promoted through newspapers, television, propaganda posters, and photography.

Photography is one of the accessible visual media to study corporeality. This medium is limited by time, though, in that it came into use only in the 19th century, after the emergence of photography itself. At the same time, vernacular photography was perfect to reflect the changes in the way corporeality was represented in social life.

Formation of a visual image was influenced by such categories as geography (location/country where a particular photo was made); time/ epoch; and political regime. A form of a society in which photography develops is shaped under the pressure of those three planes and on their intersection. The limits of visual freedom in the Soviet space were declared on the pages of the Soviet Photo magazine and controlled by the department of aesthetics and propaganda. Looking through family albums, one can see how the composition and position of a person in the frame have changed. In the 19th century one sees a static, emotionless body usually supported by a metal prop behind; the 1920s-1930s bring along the formation of new aesthetics, a body as a tool for propaganda: workers' happy faces in the photos, imitation of working/newspaper reading/social activities; the 1940s-1960s is the epoch of collectivism, reflected in the everyday photos; a growing popularity of collective portraits against the backdrop of monuments, which minimizes individuality and emphasizes the power of collectivism; the 1980s-1990s – the period of radical political changes, the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the access to easy-to-use mini-cameras, and the emergence of photo labs open to the public. Drastic changes are visible on the photos, as well: lonely and emotion-drained faces, loosely-hanging arms, no sense of a composition. The present day is the era of selfies, zoomed-in faces, egocentricity, and the lack of a photographer as a mediator during a photo shoot.

Thus, it is possible to develop a typology of how the body position in the frame changed under the impact of technical capabilities, fashion, and socio-political factors, even though the choice of a position might seem conscious.

Sexuality and gender as presented in the photos of the Soviet period is another phenomenon worth exploring. Formally, the Soviet government granted full legal rights to women, having banned, though, the activities of independent women’s organisations. Women were given the opportunity to train in a number of professions traditionally considered in the male domain. According to the Bolshevik model, a woman had to work full time, raise children and in fact do all household chores. The image of a female worker with vivid masculine traits was cultivated. Moreover, such an image was visualized with the help of the Soviet propaganda posters.

The Soviet gender equality meant that all women had to conform to a traditional male standard. It provided for, so to speak, women’s masculinization — everyone should work on equal terms, prepared for labor and defense of the nation alike. There could not be any specific female issues in the society. Therefore, the Soviet corporeal canon aimed to minimize the sexual characteristics, reducing them to zero. Upbringing became radically asexual and prudish.

As far as the representation of a naked body by means of photography is concerned, it was a rare thing to see nudes in 19th-century Ukraine. There were usually photographs of specific parts of a body or commercial pictures printed for the clients of brothels. The Revolution of 1917 ushered in the epoch of gender equality, which led to the freedom of visual culture. Two trends originated in photography: an aesthetic one, founded by Pictorialist photographers, which ended in late 1920s, and an ideological one. The representatives of the former trend made photos where models posed in a studio or in "plein-air", which emphasized the aesthetics of the body and the delicacy of shapes. The followers of the latter one popularized the healthy body in a documentary genre. In the mid-1920s, the body became an instrument of propaganda, while sports turned into a governmental policy. In the mid-1930s, photography of a naked body was classified as pornography, criticized, and could lead to one’s arrest and social exclusion. The "thaw" began in the 1950s-1960s, although by the 1990s photos with naked bodies were still carefully hidden in family archives.

It is from the 1970s onwards that the body was reappraised in the art community and became an instrument of protest against the current policy and social situation. A new trend called "performance" emerged. It was documented with the help of video and photo cameras. Priorities changed over time, the documentary materials having acquired artistic and historical values. Ukrainian performatism avoids masochism, often using photographic mediation which prevents a direct contact with the spectator and allows time to stop.

The collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to new trends – freedom of speech and expression actualized corporeality in art, photography, and social spheres. The number of projects not subject to holistic studies in the context of history and social changes has increased sharply ever since.

Text | Kateryna Radchenko

IMAGES CAPTIONS

1 | from the family archive of Svitlana Kulinich, 1936
2–3 | Michail Palinchak, from the series Bilateral Rooms, 2015–2017
4 | Svitlana Levchenko, from the series Body Language, 2017
5 | Mila Teshaieva, from the series Imagined Community, 2016–2017

Kateryna Radchenko

works as curator, photographer, photography researcher. Lives and works in Ukraine. She´s founder and director of the international festival Odessa Photo Days. As an author, she has published articles in several international magazines and online platforms, such as Fotograf, Magenta, EIKON, FOAM Magazines. Curated exhibitions in Ukraine, South Korea, Sweden, Georgia, France, Germany, Belarus and Latvia.

#31 body

The image of the body can take many forms reflecting the never-ending human desire to create the imprints of ourselves. The theme of the body and corporeality has appeared in photography since the very beginning. But it does not include only the classic and much-repeated nude, already exhausted in its commercial and common academic forms. The body itself is the mortal frame of the human being and its physical existence, whose uniqueness and evanescence we are aware of although we often try to forget about it. The body is born, and it grows, matures and becomes an object or the initiator of amorous passion: the female body produces children, and the male body is involved in a sexual act. Then the human body gets older, gradually wastes away, experiences diseases and bodily injuries, and eventually ceases to exist like everything else in the cycle of time. Photography and photographers have a unique chance to capture or interpret all these phases. Plato’s conception of corporeality gave rise to the dichotomy of the “body” and “soul”. Once we identify them in our being, we can see the body as a primary form of life that fundamentally determines our being in the world and expresses who we really are. It would be interesting if our physical experience was given the same, if not higher, value like our thinking. The representation of the body is the representation of strength and weakness, and the associated social and cultural codes, including sexuality and gender types. In this magazine issue, we focus on author and photographic projects presenting the human body and nudity sometimes as an object, sometimes as a means to stimulate the viewer’s critical reflections on the current political, cultural, sexual, gender, and socio-economic issues.