ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that there was also a counter-side to the image of countryside bliss in Heimat photography. It traces how a leftist perspective on the rural population forged an image of the countryside as a place of struggle. Considering rural areas as a dystopian ‘hinterland’ in alignment with socialist rhetoric, leftist photographers sought to draw attention to rural poverty and inequality. Assessing their strategies to achieve this, the chapter considers Austria's leftist illustrated press in relation to wider developments in Central Europe, affirming sustained connections and interactions after 1918 while also pointing towards the fact that, when it came to social photography, Austria represented a notable exception when it came to activist rural photography in the region. Drawing attention to images of rural margins as they circulated in leftist magazines, their appeals to worker and amateur photographers, and their aims to construct a critical and politically engaged view of rural life in a context where images of rural bliss dominated, the chapter underlines the struggles of the Left to situate the countryside between a place of leisure and in an accelerating political battle. Ultimately it underlines that the dominance of idealising rural images was difficult to overcome.
