Photography can serve to construct a reality rather than reflect it, taking advantage of our assumption of photography as true documentation. The MacLaren is home to Sovfoto: a collection of over 20,000 press photos from the Soviet Union’s diligent propaganda campaign over World War II and its aftermath. Many of its images depict war and atrocities, while others portray idyllic and ordered everyday life in schools, at work, and at play. In Illusory Images, staged photos of children show a sanitized narrative and profess an advanced conception of what life was like under Stalin’s dictatorship.
The Sovfoto archive reminds us that photographs are never neutral records. They are shaped by choices, intentions, and audiences.
