The Author as Photographer: Tret'iakov's, Erenburg's, and Il'f's Images of the West

The essay considers the role of photography in the work of the early Soviet writers Sergei Tret'iakov, Il'ia Erenburg, and Il'ia Il'f in terms of Walter Benjamin's essay "The Author as Producer." Identifying Tret'iakov as a model for emulation, Benjamin described the revolutionary transformation of the role of the author and the nature of literary work. Calling for the overthrown of "the barrier between writing and image," Benjamin exhorted writers to take up photography. Committed to creating a distinct Soviet literature, these authors turned to explicitly journalistic forms and incorporated photography into their publications. Using a Leica camera, each created a significant body of photographic work, much of it featuring non-Soviet subjects. The essay examines Tret'iakov's photographs of a collective farm in the Caucasus and of Hamburg, Erenburg's photo-book My Paris, and Il'f's photographs of the United States, relating this photographic literary work to related developments in Soviet literature that accompanied the rise of Socialist Realism during the 1930s.