Recently we wrote about reasons for the creative success of Helmut Newton's works, which became symbols for Western photography of a new attitude toward the role of women. At the same time, we should not forget that European and American desires and notions of morality were quite different from those that, for historical reasons, had become entrenched in other parts of the world. A case in point is the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev Thaw.

In 1959, Nikolai Khorunzhy, a correspondent of Soviet Union magazine, was assigned to shoot new buildings in Novye Cheremushki. This shooting, as well as the majority of similar materials published in this Party-controlled magazine, implied a strong propagandist implication, namely that here they were, the long-awaited achievements of socialist construction, improving the lives of ordinary people. Strictly speaking, it was also not by chance that Khorunzhy was approached. After all, he had a consistent art education, studied with the famous artist A. Vasnetsov, was known as a master of staged photography. By the way, it was he who later made the famous picture "Alyonka", the reproduction of which still continues to be printed on chocolate candy wrappers.

However, Khorunzhy did not carry out his task exactly as his political clients had expected. Instead of shooting sweet agitation, he shot "New Apartment" in a provocative vein of Soviet photography on the verge of the "nude" genre. Although all the formal restrictions were respected - the girl was completely covered by a curtain, while her mother was closely following the shot - the photo caused mixed reactions in the audience. On the one hand, at the "Seven Years in Action" exhibition where it was decided to show the photograph, it was removed as bourgeois pornography and an article was published with negative criticism of its author. At the same time, it was awarded a silver medal at the same exhibition, as it was valued by the jury and still managed to capture the attention of viewers. As a result, the picture was shown abroad more than once and was published in the foreign press as a typical example of the new Soviet photo art.

What was the reason for such a stir around this totally innocent picture? The reason is that Khorunzhy showed the changes that had been eagerly awaited not only by the Soviet public but also abroad. The photo became a symbol of the thaw era, when the course of the Soviet government, at least in some respects, changed from repressive to encouraging. Soviet people, exhausted by war and the political processes of the Stalin era, finally felt that the heroic efforts they were making were having an effect that improved their personal, rather than state, well-being. It became possible, at least temporarily, to experience the blows of foreign culture, for example at the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 or the all-union successful American Exhibition in Sokolniki in 1959.

At the same time, if one compares the "New Apartment" photograph with H. Newton's contemporary works, the gap between the two realities, the West and the Soviet Union, becomes apparent culturally and socio-economically. While Newton's models were busy choosing this or that style of underwear or erotic accessories, Soviet girls dreamed of getting out of the communal apartment and into their own apartment, of showers with a constant flow of hot water, and, even more often, of affordable food. As the practice of knowing foreign standards of living proved, the decades-long system of communist propaganda could not resist these modest domestic needs: people wanted to experience a minimum of comfort now, not universal prosperity in an unknown future. In this respect, the domestic appeal of the private shower room in the "New Apartment" photograph was even more important than the erotic appeal of the girl's silhouette behind the curtain. After all, it was private apartment, not the suit or the model's data, that promised the Soviet citizen the fulfillment of his innermost desire to be free of the ubiquitous political gaze and the watchful vigilance of the informers' and foes.

Artem Loginov, for "History of One Photo"