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Factography, a Soviet art technique/concept, emerged in the 1920’s. This technique is a branch-off of the photomontage and incorporates many of the same characteristics as its predecessor. However, a major difference occurs from photomontage to factography in the sense that factography portrays a series of stories in a documentary-like fashion, but alters specific facts in order to convey a certain message. Sara Bailey characterizes factography as, “Because there was no room for fiction, no art for art’s sake, the communist regime created a series of stories, a collective mythology, out of pieces from the past using real people, real places, and real events, only shifting and spinning the facts behind each to reach a greater truth, a common understanding of reality” (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver/08Spring/bailey/Home.html).
From the concept of factography given above, it can be derived that reality is altered in some way through its usage. This is clearly seen when Alexander Rodchenko documented the construction of the White Seal Canal in 1931. He was employed by the communist regime to photograph the “heroic technological achievements of the Stalin government and to produce a volume of photographic record” (Buchloh, 117). This act alone would not be considered factography, but Rodchenko made a moral (or unmoral depending on how you look at it) decision to not document the 100,000 plus workers who died during the construction of this massive canal.
Most likely, Rodchenko chose to not portray the construction of the White Sea Canal in its true and honest light because he was employed by the state and would have lost his job. As Buchloh puts it, “it is undoubtedly clear that at this time Rodchenko did not have any other choice than to comply with the interest of the State Publishing House if he wanted to maintain his role as an artist who participated actively in the construction of the new Soviet society” (117). I found it very interesting that he made this decision, as it must have been a very tough ethical/moral decision to make. I believe that more than his job was likely on the line, probably also his life at the hands of the Stalin regime if he chose to expose the inhuman conditions. Nonetheless, “his subsequent publications on the subject only project a grandiose vision of nature harnessed by technology and the criminal and hedonistic impulses of the prerevolutionary and counterrevolutionary personality mastered through the process of reeducation in the forced labor camps of the White Sea Canal” (Buchloh, 117).
Thus, Rodchenko used the technique of factography to obscure the decrepit and deadly work on the canal and simultaneously portrayed the technological/industrial progress of the Soviet Union during this time.
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