Stalin's Great Aunt

1930

First Western photographer admitted to the USSR

She is granted official access to document the industrial sites of the Soviet Union during the first five-year plan, the first Western professional photographer to be admitted. She returns in each of the next two summers, until 1932.

c. 1930

A studio in the Chrysler Building

The building’s management at first refuses to rent to a woman, but with a recommendation from Fortune, her principal employer at the time, she opens her studio there shortly afterwards. She hires John Vassos to design the deluxe interior, whose clean modern lines echo the building’s exterior.

1930–1932

Photographs Stalin, his mother, Radek and Eisenstein

On her trips she photographs Joseph Stalin and, in Georgia, his mother and great-aunt; she also portrays Karl Radek, Sergei Eisenstein and Hugh Cooper. The work in the USSR demanded great patience, and her impressions remained mixed but on the whole positive.

1931

“Eyes on Russia” in Fortune

Her Soviet photographs first appear in Fortune under the title “Eyes on Russia”; a book of the same name follows from Simon and Schuster.

1932–1934

The Soviet series: newspaper, portfolio, photomurals

The Soviet photographs run as a six-part series in The New York Times (1932), as a deluxe photo portfolio (1934) and as photomurals for the Soviet consulate in New York (1934); other frames circulate in exhibitions, books and periodicals around the globe, especially in Soviet magazines and postcards.

1934

Photographs Dust Bowl drought victims for Fortune

Like Dorothea Lange, she photographs the victims of the Dust Bowl drought. This Depression-era work marks the beginning of her shift from corporate photography to photojournalism.