| Abstract [eng] |
This dissertation provides the comprehensive historical model of the development of Lithuanian photography, highlighting sovietization as the most contingent factor to have influenced the evolution of stylistic expression, as well as to have regulated the dissemination of photography and public reaction to its visual “messages”. One of the most important objectives of photography sovietization can be linked to the construction of a new ideological reality – altreality. The photography of a totalitarian regime had to not only reproduce existing reality, but also create a reality of symbolic values. However, attitudes toward altreality in photography also changed during the post-Stalin years as certain ideological reforms in the regulation of culture occurred. Lithuanian photographers, the first in the Soviet Union to reawaken aesthetic attitudes, not only broadened the spectrum of representing of Soviet life, but also distanced themselves from pseudorealist expression. The evolution of photography in the Soviet era is directly linked with stages in the political process and can be observed in the formation of three artistic waves: the photojournalism of Stalin’s socialist realism was all-encompassing; the policies implemented by Nikita Khrushchev created conditions for a new documentary form directed at the social environment; while the devisualization movement conveyed Leonid Brezhnev’s stagnation crisis and brought significance to postmodernist views. Photography sovietization studies broaden the characterization of culture management, emphasizing the integration of national experience into a Soviet world view formation strategy. |
