The first phase of East German photography, beginning in the late 1940s and institutionalized with the establishment of the Central Commission for Photography (ZKF) in 1960, represents a deliberate severance from western traditions. The first generation of East German photographers, including many who had participated in the worker photography movement of the 1930s such as Walter Ballhause and Eugen Heilig, focused on documenting the construction of socialism in Germany and developing an iconography of the peasant and workers' state. An heroic image of the worker was articulated by artists such as Paul Damm and Käte Basarke, and a distinct East German style emerged characterized by realism in form and narrative. Of particular importance were photographic depictions of key socialist "types" and moments, carefully posed to enhance their drama of purpose and clarity of meaning. "Socialist realism represents reality in its revolutionary development, in its most progressive appearances. From these appearances, it then chooses the most basic, typical, and characteristic," Professor W.P. Jefanow, Secretary of the Union of Soviet Fine Artists, declared in an interview in Die Fotografie. "The main task of the artist is to render man and his life in all its variety." (DF 12/53, p. 331)