Photographing Central Asia: From the Periphery of the Russian Empire to Global Presence

Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2022

Photographing Central Asia

From the Periphery of the Russian Empire to Global Presence

Edited by: Svetlana Gorshenina , Sergei Abashin , Bruno De Cordier and Tatiana Saburova

Volume 13 in the series Welten Süd- und Zentralasiens / Worlds of South and Inner Asia / Mondes de l'Asie du Sud et de l'Asie Centrale

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110754469

Overview
Contents

About this book

Open Access

This volume addresses new theoretical approaches in visual and memory studies that prompted to rethink of the photography of Russian Turkestan of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Attempts to relate the visual unknown documentations to postcolonial criticism also opened up new interpretive arenas, helping to decentralize the analysis of the history of photography.

The aim of this volume is to interpret photography as a specific tool that reifies reality, subjectively frames it, and fits it into various political, ideological, commercial, scientific, and artistic contexts.

Without reducing the entire argument to the binary of ‘photography and power’, the authors reveal the different modes of seeing that involve distinct cultural norms, social practices, power relations, levels of technology, and networks for circulating photography, and that determined the manner of its (re)use in constructing various images of Central Asia.

The volume demonstrates that photography was the cornerstone of imperial media governance and discourse construction in colonial Turkestan of the tsarist and early Soviet periods. The various cases show the complex mechanisms by which images of Turkestan were created, remembered, or forgotten from the nineteenth until the twenty-first century.

The book should appeal to scholars of the Russian Empire and Central Asia; of history of photography and visual culture; of memory studies. It should be appropriate for use in upper-level undergraduate courses, and even a broader public.

Author / Editor information

S. Gorshenina, CNRS; S. Abashin, European Univ. St. Petersburg; B.J. De Cordier; Ghent Univ.; T. Saburova; Indiana Univ.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Note on transliteration Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
1 Introduction: “On the margins of the marginal” – Why are there so few specialists in Central Asian photography of the imperial and early Soviet period? Svetlana Gorshenina Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I: Photography and orientalisms
2 Picturing the Other, mapping the Self: Charles-Eugène de Ujfalvy’s anthropological and ethnographic photography in Russian Turkestan (1876–1881) Felix de Montety Open Access Download PDF	39
3 Picturing “Russia’s Orient”: The peoples of Russian Turkestan through the lens of Samuil M. Dudin (1900–1902) Laura Elias Open Access Download PDF	63
4 The photographic legacy of Alexander N. Samoilovich (1880–1938) Anton Ikhsanov Open Access Download PDF	91
5 Hungarian orientalism as seen through the photographs of György Almásy’s second expedition to the Kazakh and Kyrgyz territories in 1906 István Sántha and Eötvös Lóránd Open Access Download PDF	129
6 From Siberia to Turkestan: Semirechie in writings and photographs of Vasilii V. Sapozhnikov Tatiana Saburova Open Access Download PDF	165
7 “Another Turkestan” of senator Konstantin von der Pahlen (1908–1909) and engineer Nikolai M. Shchapov (1911–1913) Tatiana Kotiukova Open Access Download PDF	189
Part II: Using and reusing photographs
8 Pre-revolutionary postcards with views of Turkestan Natalia А. Mozokhina Open Access Download PDF	217
9 The Aralsk and Kazalinsk regions in early twentieth-century postcard photography: How does it reflect the social history and modern transformation of the Aral Sea backwater? Bruno De Cordier Open Access Download PDF	249
10 Max Penson: The rise of a Soviet photographer from the margins Helena Holzberger Open Access Download PDF	267
11 The expeditions of the Academy for the History of Material Culture to Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s: An examination of its well-known and unknown photographic collections Natalia Lazarevskaia and Maria Medvedeva Open Access Download PDF	299
12 “Ethnographic types” in the photographs of Turkestan: Orientalism, nationalisms and the functioning of historical memory on Facebook pages (2017–2019) Svetlana Gorshenina Open Access Download PDF	329
13 Afterword: Unmarginalising Central Asian Photography Svetlana Gorshenina, Sergei Abashin, Bruno De Cordier and Tatiana Saburova Open Access Download PDF	399
List of figures and tables Open Access Download PDF	401
Geographic index Open Access Download PDF	413
Index nominum Open Access Download PDF	417
Index rerum Open Access Download PDF	423

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars of the Russian Empire and Central Asia; history of photography, visual culture. memory studies; libraries.
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 431
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 32
- Coloured Illustrations: 141
- Tables: 3
Keywords: Russian Turkistan; 19th and 20th century: photography; history

eBook

Published: September 6, 2022
ISBN: 9783110754469

Hardcover

Published: September 6, 2022
ISBN: 9783110754421