Oldal 398 [398]
396
Magdalena Sztandara
that the ideas of socialism, such as education for women, solidarity, self-improve¬
ment and their active participation in social, cultural and political life, were be¬
coming a reality in the new state. However, the promotion of reading by women
actually indicated their (traditional) responsibilities as national citizens: nurtur¬
ing the nation, preserving moral values of socialism and mothering future genera¬
tions. When looking at the photographs in Silesian newspapers, one can argue that
women’s tasks and duties resemble the slogan ‘God, Family and the Country’ (see
Karczyriska 1996) on the one hand, and ‘Six-Year Plan’ on the other: “the conscien¬
tious fulfilment of the obligations to the state does not lie solely in paying taxes or
realizing the agricultural supplies, but also in making everything that strengthens
the power of the state and helps to execute the Six-Year Plan.”’
The popularised historical narrative about the times of social realism is often
based on the ideological and symbolic violence visible in literature, movies, chron¬
icles and photographs in the newspapers. The images of ‘a woman from a news¬
paper’ that we look at are rather idealised pictures that show not ‘how it was’ but
actually ‘how it was supposed to be’. Thus, photorealism provides particular nar¬
rations that constitute preserved patterns, which in turn allow us to read women’s
stories from newspapers in a positivistic and historicist perspective.
The media propaganda and the power of imaginaries and representations are
nothing new and have already been acknowledged in the humanities. Press photog¬
raphy is a powerful ideological weapon of propaganda due to, inter alia, a “strongly
rooted bourgeois conviction” (Sekula 2010: 13), which implies the immanent sig¬
nificance of photography and constitutes its founding myth about its authenti¬
city and truthfulness. The particular, staged, sceneries with photographed women
are then transformed as press events, or even, as a “state of affairs” (cf. Flusser
2000). They are not maps, but screens, which instead of ‘displaying’ the world as
it is, rather ‘represent’ it. The meaning that comes with the image-as-message is
determined by specific context and undergoes a transformation that is depend¬
ant on different values and codes, particular conditions and assumptions as well
as social convention (cf Freedberg 1989). These aspects constitute the power of
photographic images of the women, who thereby are reduced to the “role of visual
instruction” (Kociuba 2010: 9).
However, another interpretative trace is also possible. The published photo¬
graphs contain the world, portraying a narrow perspective that belongs to male
photographers. Thus, their (male) points of view are highlighted and refer to domi¬
nant (male) ideas about cognition of the world (in a symbolical and metaphorical
sense as well). The photograph, as cultural text, implies here the context of play,
which is staged by the director, a male photographer. ‘He’ was the one who de¬
signed the stage and controlled the photographed subject (or object). Thus, the
? The commentary was written by Stanislawa Rutkowska from Raciszöw village (Kalendarz Ziemi Opol¬
skiej 1952: 79).