The Body of Power and the Power of the Body: Magazine Photography of the Thaw

How did perceptions of the body change during the Thaw era — and what does photography tell us about it? How did Khrushchev and Eisenhower appear through the lens of the epoch? How was the Soviet space odyssey created on the pages of periodicals? Ekaterina Vikulina examines bodily norms related to labor, health, age, gender, and ethnicity using material from the magazines "Ogonyok," "Zdorovye," "Fizkultura i sport," and other publications. Photographs from the 1950s and 1960s become a reflection of two transformations: on one hand, the visual language associated with the body, and on the other — the ideology and culture of Soviet society.