New scholarship on Zenta Dzividzinska by Maria Garth in Journal of Avant-Garde Studies

Fantastic new scholarship on Zenta Dzividzinska in article by Maria Garth, "Soviet Avant-Gardes and Socialist Realism. Women Photographers Bridging the Divide, 1930s-1960s," published in Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, (2022) 1–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/25896377-00102002

The article is available as Open Access, download it here: https://doi.org/10.1163/25896377-00102002

Abstract:

“This article examines the history of photography in the Soviet Union through the work of three women photographers from different generations and republics: Olga Ignatovich (1905–1984), Valentina Kulagina (1902–1987), and Zenta Dzividzinska (1944–2011). It traces how these photographers, whose work in Russia and Latvia spanned from the 1920s through the 1970s, reconciled their oeuvres with the complex—and often competing—legacies of art and photography movements under socialism. Their choices of subject matter, form, and means of distribution present a case study of how women photographers shaped the creation of the Soviet photographic aesthetic through a combination of post-revolutionary avant-garde practices and elements of Socialist Realism.”