Viktor Karlovich Bulla

Viktor Karlovich Bulla ( Russian Виктор Карлович Булла ; * August 1, 1883 in Saint Petersburg ; † October 30, 1938 ) was a photographer in St. Petersburg who, after the October Revolution, together with some colleagues on behalf of the government, the revolutionary events between 1917 and Captured in the picture in 1920. The photographic essay October documents a number of these images. Among other things, Sergei Eisenstein used Bulla's photos for his film October .

Life

Karl Bulla with his sons Alexander and Wiktor

Wiktor Bulla was the son of the photographer Carl Oswald Bulla from Leobschütz , who founded a photo agency in St. Petersburg between 1890 and 1900 . Carl Oswald Bulla sold photos of current Russian events to Western European newspapers and magazines . He was later supported by his son Alexander, born in 1881, and his brother Wiktor.

Wiktor Bulla studied in Germany and then worked as a photo correspondent , first in the Russo-Japanese War , then in the First World War . In 1917 the Petrograd Soviet appointed him head of its photography committee. On behalf of the People's Commissariat for Education (headed by Anatoli Wassiljewitsch Lunatscharski ), Bulla's photo studio, in which his brother Alexander worked, documented, together with other photographers, the celebrations for the first anniversary of the revolution in November 1918. His father Carl Oswald followed suit retired to Estonia after World War I , where he died on the island of Ösel in 1929.

Bullas colleagues in his revolutionary photography included Jakob Wladimirowitsch Steinberg , Pawel Semjonowitsch Schukow and Juri Petrovich Yeryomin . The “photographic essay” October emerged from her pictures “as a kaleidoscopic summary” . This publication strongly influenced Alexander Rodchenko and Sergei Eisenstein among others ; the latter used, among other things, images of Bulla for his film October 1927.

In 1937, the year of the Great Terror , Bulla was arrested. In 1944, his family was informed that he had died of cancer in a prison camp. In reality, however, he had already been sentenced to death and shot in October 1938.

reception

Two photo albums from the Russian People's Commissariat for Education, which among other things contain numerous pictures of Bulla from the years 1917 to 1919, are preserved in the Basel “Herzog Collection”. The pictures were shown for the first time at an exhibition at the Museum Tinguely in 2003. Parts of Bulla's photographic estate were found in a state archive in St. Petersburg, parts are now stored in the photo archive of the Moscow House of Photography .

literature

• Peter Herzog: Photographs of the Russian Revolution from the Ruth and Peter Herzog Collection. "October" - The new icons. In: Museum Jean Tinguely Basel (ed.): 0.10 - Iwan Puni and photographs of the Russian Revolution . Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in Basel from April 12 to September 28, 2003. Bern: Benteli, 2003, pp. 75–100. ISBN 3-7165-1308-3
• Heiko Haumann , Andreas Guski: Revolution and Photography. Two photo albums from the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment and the Utopia of the Future Society. In: Museum Jean Tinguely Basel (ed.): 0.10 - Iwan Puni and photographs of the Russian Revolution . Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in Basel from April 12 to September 28, 2003. Bern: Benteli, 2003, pp. 101–130. ISBN 3-7165-1308-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herzog 2003, p. 75.
2. ^ Cathy Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy: Muscle maryas. In: The Guardian , Jan. 28, 2006. Online .
3. ↑ See Anna Kowalowa, Vladimir Nikitin: Виктор Карлович Булла - Кинооператор (Viktor Karlowitsch Bulla - cinema operator). In: Киноведческие Записки (Kinowedtscheskie Sapiski, German: Filmwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen), No. 102/103 (2013), pp. 345–356. The file on his execution is quoted on p. 354. Online in Russian .
4. ^ Cathy Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy: Muscle maryas. In: The Guardian , Jan. 28, 2006. Online .
5. ↑ [1] . In: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow . Retrieved September 25, 2014.

Web links

Commons : Viktor Bulla  - collection of images, videos and audio files