Georgia, the 1930s: Celebrations

“Meet the new Five-Year Plan. One hundred percent mobilization of all forces and means at the disposal of the Soviet photographic movement, in the service of the Five-Year Plan. This—and only this—can today be the slogan of the country’s photographers, victoriously building socialism.”

Photography was thus explicitly placed at the service of socialist ideology. Visual chronicles of a transformative era were created, documenting the profound political, social, and economic changes brought about by socialist reconstruction.

In 1933, the association Georgian Photo was founded, uniting leading Georgian photographers of the period. The group actively participated in All-Union and international exhibitions and competitions.

Following the publication of a critical article in the newspaper Pravda in 1936, a campaign was launched against so-called “formalism,” “naturalism,” and “bourgeois survivals” in art. That same year, at the First Republican Photography Exhibition in Tbilisi, visitors were presented with images of socialist competition winners, industrial workers, collective farmers (kolkhozniks), and monumental industrial landscapes.

In 1932, a major photography competition titled October Celebration was held in Moscow, dedicated to visualizing the achievements of socialism in the USSR. One of the prizes was awarded to a Georgian photographer, Meskhi, for the photograph A Collective Farmer at a Demonstration.

This collection brings together photographs depicting public celebrations, mass demonstrations, and collective gatherings of 1930s Georgia—images that reflect both the visual language of the era and the ideological framework within which they were produced.

The photographs are preserved in the State Cinema-Photo Archive.

Giorgi Gersamia