“Shooting facts”: Sergei Tret’iakov’s Social Foto-Ocherk as a Model for the Organization of Leisure

The article considers the political instrumentalisation of Sergei M. Tret’iakov’s journalism (1892 –1937) on the example of his—hitherto unstudied—photo-sketches of officially organized break and rest periods, convalescence in sanatoria and leisure activities at a resort. They combine documentary and performative functions of the visual image and the text. Their documentary nature lies above all in the slogan under which Tret’iakov chooses suitable material from which he builds a narrative of new Soviet life, giving us examples of good behavior of Soviet man in a sanatorium, at weekends, on days off work, during sports or at civil defense exercises. An optimum of organization is shown, down to sequential reporting on the May Day demonstration and the sample of the photo-sketch as such. In Tret’iakov’s opinion in the future it is necessary to return and repeat sketches on the same themes to document the efficiency of the organization of life. Although he considered himself as a representative of the literatura fakta and wrote that he hunted for facts, his sketches reveal no difference between the documentation of reality and its production. His sketches are part of the poetics of perfection, seriality, and expansion.