Sergei Tretyakov
[Writer, critic, and artist, b. 1892, Guldiga, Russia (now Kuldigas, Latvia), d. 1939, Moscow.]
Every young boy with a camera wages war against the easel painters, and every little reporter-factographer can turn his pen into a mortal weapon against literature.
(1928)
If a more or less random snapshot is like an infinitely fine scale that has been scratched from the surface of reality with the tip of a finger, then in comparison the photoseries or photomontage lets us experience the extended massiveness of reality, its authentic meaning. We build systematically. We must also photograph systematically. Sequence and long-term photographic observation—that is the method.
If the photograph, under the influence of the text (or caption), expresses not simply the fact which it shows, but also the social tendency expressed by the fact, then this is already a photomontage.
I don’t know what would be more difficult for me during a writer’s trip: to lose my pen and notebook or my camera?