“The Struggle For Utopia”: Everyday Soviet Life In Magnificent Photos By Semyon Friedland

Semyon Osipovich Friedland was a soviet photographer from Kiev. He was born in 1905 into a family of Jewish shoemakers. He began his career as a journalist, but then left the profession because of the censorship. In 1932 he graduated from the photography department of the State Institute of Cinematography. In 1950 Friedland worked as an editor-in-chief for the photography department of the famous “Ogonyok” (Russian: Огонёк, lit. “little flame”), which is one of the oldest weekly illustrated magazines in USSR and is published even today in Russia.

In that time he also took these photos, where we can see how people lived in the USSR after World War II. Even if these photos are staged, they are quite interesting from a historical perspective.