Table Of ContentAbstract: This article documents over five years of exploratory work
digitizing glass plate negatives across Siberia dating from the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article explains the
technical and cultural challenges governing access to these collec-
tions and offers a preliminary analysis of the themes common to
this collection of over 4,000 images. The article is accompanied by a
photo essay, which provides a sample of the material and the attri-
butions, as well as references to electronic resources for the full col-
lection and guides to further digitization.
Keywords: archives, colonial situation, history, Imperial, indigenous
peoples, scopic regimes, Soviet
I
n the past two decades, there has been a renaissance in the documen-
tation and analysis of archaic photographs of frontier populations.
Anthropologists and cultural historians working in North America
(Brown & Peers 2006; King 1998), Australia (Lydon 2005; Thorner
2008), and with Siberian collections in the United States (Kendall et al.
1997) have become fascinated with the visual archive of colonial situa-
tions, their scopic regimes of classification and control, and how for-
mer subject peoples now resignify these images in the context of land
claims and the ratification of traditional knowledge systems. It is a lit-
tle known fact that Russian museums, and to some extent regional
state archives across Russia, have extensive collections of photographs
and glass plate negatives. For various technical reasons these are diffi-
cult to access and in some cases precariously stored. As a result these
collections have remained under-researched and largely unknown by
both Russian and foreign scholars. This article documents five years of
work of a small research team lead by David Anderson (University of
Aberdeen, Scotland) and Craig Campbell (University of Alberta, Can-
ada). The team has been engaged in pioneering work to discover, clas-
sify, digitize, and distribute images of Siberian indigenous peoples.
These images are held in a number of archives located in Central Si-
beria.1 To date, the team has digitized upwards of 4,000 images in five
cities.
The bulk of our energy has been focused on the technical chal-
lenges surrounding this enterprise. These range from actually finding
the collections to the details of how best to digitize and then re-archive
the material. An important part of our fieldwork was the attribution of
collections. Here, along with a photo-essay of sample images, we pre-
sent a commentary on the image based on the fragmentary attributions
found with the images. This article presents a strong argument that
work with these collections cannot help but be a team effort because
detailed local knowledge is necessary both to find and to interpret the
collections. The commentaries presented are translated from research
notes by Siberian specialists—most significantly those of Anna A. Si-
rina in Irkutsk and Mikhial S. Batashev in Krasnoiarsk. This article also
presents preliminary analysis of a few visual tropes that are evident to
us. The article should also be seen an open invitation to readers to
share with us in the analysis and distribution of this material.
The Scopic Regime of the Russian Colonial Situation
Anthropologists and historians working with the visual archives of
colonialism are often concerned with the technological practices that
structure the photographic representation of frontier environments
(Faris 1996; Pinney and Peterson 2003; Tagg 1988). The concept of a
"scopic regime" can be useful in foregrounding various implicit and
explicit gazes embedded in photographic practices. Developed by Chris-
tian Metz (1982), this concept has been used to draw attention to the
problematic relationship between the sensuously real image in the pho-
tograph and the context in which it was created (Jay 1994). Focusing on
scopic regimes encourages us to avoid looking at the photographed
subject matter as though the contextual milieu were merely incidental.
Insisting on an analysis that begins with the consideration of cultural
2 Sibirica
Picturing Central Siberia
and institutional practices of looking, the idea of the scopic regime em-
phasizes that culturally unique ways-of-seeing are governed through
hegemonic structures of power that are always under interpretive ten-
sion. Therefore, when trying to understand an image, we might con-
sider the interrelation between photographic chemicals and mechanisms
of the camera, the "eyes" of both the photographer and the audience,
as well as the agency of the individual (or even landscape) being pho-
tographed. Our aim here is to ensure that the photographic images are
represented as documents of singular encounters as well as documents
produced within particular historical circumstances.
The last decades of the nineteenth century saw a massive explo-
sion of interest in photography around the world. Not only was pho-
tography an increasingly popular pastime and profession in the major
centers of European Russia but, with the aid of modern rail transporta-
tion systems, it had also become established east of the Urals. One well-
known studio photographer, V.L. Metenkov, maintained studios in Miass
and Ekaterinburg (Biriukov 1999: 14). Photography had become in-
creasingly accessible, partly due to the introduction of mass-produced
equipment and supplies like dry gelatin glass plate negatives (or dry
plate negatives). Prior to this time, what was called the "wet plate"
process necessitated the actual chemical preparation of the emulsion
immediately prior to taking a photograph. This was a difficult and
time-consuming process that deterred many would-be photographers.
For already established amateur and professional photographers the
introduction of dry plate photography offered significantly more free-
dom to travel greater distances with their cameras and as a result they
began to document more remote places. In addition, the development
of better lenses and emulsions allowed for increasingly shorter expo-
sure times, which in turn allowed for greater flexibility and creativity
in photography. Some of the images from this time look more like the
journalistic and snapshot photography that became popular decades
later. Rather than the awkwardly frozen portraits and depopulated
scenes that typified early field photography, dry plate photography
paired with improved cameras and lenses could capture more dy-
namic, poorly lit, and otherwise difficult scenes.
Christopher Pinney (2003) encourages us to try to understand how
individuals and institutions incorporated photographs and photogra-
phy into their everyday lives. Unfortunately, aside from documenting
the fact that massive collections of late Imperial and early Soviet pho-
tographs exist in archives, our team still has a very poor understand-
ing of the public exhibitions and early forms of publications that
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David C. Anderson and Craig Campbell
featured them. In this article we document the systems of distribution
and circulation of images—which were often the only attributes still
found connected to collections. These systems differed slightly between
the end of the Imperial era (late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries)
and the start of the Soviet era (in Siberia, post-1922).
In contrast to the visual history of British late Imperialism, which
was often illustrated by images held in private family photo albums
(Ryan 1997), Siberian photography at the turn of the twentieth century
was often mediated by locally administered institutions. Perhaps be-
cause of the logistical problems and the costs of working with gelatin-
covered glass plates, photographic collections were more likely than
not to be generated by teams working with special government expe-
ditions. The expeditions would be led by one individual leader but
composed of a team of porters who helped haul expeditionary gear, in-
cluding the photographic equipage necessary for glass plate photogra-
phy. The images were more than likely also shown at special public
exhibitions or exchanged with other departments or branches of the
scientific societies. Photographic prints of some of the glass plate im-
ages held in Irkutsk and Krasnoiarsk can be found in archives of the
Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Similarly, copies of collections
held in central museums can be found in the collections in Krasnoiarsk.
The 1926-27 Polar Census expedition produced three identical photo
albums to document their work for government officials and audi-
ences at central museums. Only one of these albums survives; it is lo-
cated at the Krasnoiarsk Regional Museum Archives (KKKM 7930-1).
Some of the images in the late Imperial period were prepared as
lantern slides. Lantern slides are specially prepared glass slides de-
signed to be used with a projector. As with a print, they are made from
an "original negative" and are therefore positive transparent images.
The lantern slides were used in both academic and popular settings, as
science and entertainment. "Magic lantern" spectacles were in vogue
for many years and traveling projectionists often drew large crowds in
cities throughout Europe (and most likely in Siberia as well). The engi-
neer and historian Henry Petroski notes:
Although popularly developed as an entertainment medium, by
which patrons could watch a picture show for free, ultimately magic
lanterns and lantern slides "had the greatest impact on educational
lectures, especially in visual disciplines. They played a vital role in
the development of disciplines such as art and architectural history,
making possible the detailed study of objects and sites from around
the world." (Library of Congess n.d. in Petroski 2006: 19)
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Picturing Central Siberia
Private photographic collections also exist. In contrast to official archival
collections, they typically record more mundane or ephemeral aspects
of everyday life in Soviet Siberia. They trace individual fascinations
and histories; they tend to be fragmented and inconsistent. It should be
noted that our team has not yet found any copies of the late nineteenth
or early twentieth century photographs in the private collections of
Siberian indigenous families.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, in addition to photo
albums, photographs were often disseminated through post-cards, ex-
hibitions, and photographic journals. The first exhibition in Russia to
display photographs was the 1882 Pan-Russian Exhibition, which fea-
tured many of the so-called genre photographs. These were romanti-
cally inclined pictures of everyday life, such as the interior of a Russian
peasant's house or scenes of peasants at harvest time (Barchatova 1989:
17). These "genre photographs" may be seen either as a predecessor of
ethnographic photography or else a parallel discourse, sharing some
aspects of a visual grammar, which included a concern for scenes of
everyday life, labor, and material culture (Figures 1,2, 7, and 11). Genre
photography, however, tended to involve staged scenes that idealized
rural life. Photographers were staging ethnographic or genre shots in
their studios years before it was feasible to shoot these kinds of photo-
graphs in the field.
It is well documented that the British colonial era brought with it a
photographic interest in documenting and categorizing the "savage"
or "disappearing" peoples within empire's frontiers (Edwards 1992).
This is a theme well represented in Siberian photography crossing both
the Imperial and Soviet periods. Photographs of indigenous people at
the end of the nineteenth century were not ideologically neutral. Pho-
tographs displaying the poor living conditions of Siberian peoples
could evoke, for example, the liberal and protectionist agenda of the
Siberian regionalists (Kovaliashina 2007). Early Soviet photographic
collections representing the malochislennye narody (sparse peoples) were
constructed around an ideology of primitive communist virtue and
technological backwardness. Erica Wolf, a historian of Russian photog-
raphy, notes that
After the October Revolution, Russian photography followed a unique
path due to the ideological imperatives of the Soviet regime. The Bol-
sheviks quickly recognized the propaganda potential of photography
and nationalized the photographic industry. During the civil war,
special committees collected historical photographs, documented con-
temporary events, and produced photo-propaganda. (2004: 1179)
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David C. Anderson and Craig Campbell
These photographs were more likely than not to have a pedagogical as-
pect related to the outreach programs of regional museums, which had
undergone a socialist branding and restructuring (Hirsch 2005; Weiner
2002). In this sense the photographs were alternately used to illustrate
socialist evolutionism and to justify and publicize the "plight" and
subsequent liberation of the "natives." These were therefore important
in portrayals of the fantasy world of the future of socialism. These
dream-worlds required and produced specific kinds of photographs
and discourses (Figures 5,9,17, and 18).
Affective Archives
Our team worked intensively with photographic archives and collec-
tions in Central and Eastern Siberia. This article covers specifically the
collections held in a variety of institutions in the cities of Krasnoiarsk,
Minusinsk, Irkutsk, and Ekaterinburg and brought together under the
rubric of the Picturing Central Siberia collection. Our collection does
not exhaust the resources held in these archives, though. The terms of
project held a strong focus for images taken in rural regions inhabited
by people now known as the sparse native peoples of Siberia, but who
in the nineteenth century would have been classified by their faith or
social estate. In this section, we present some of our technical recom-
mendations on how to work with photographic collections in Siberia,
as we consider this to be one of the more valuable (and hard-won) re-
sults of our work. However, it is equally important to understand the
personal networks and rituals that govern access to these collections
because, without this knowledge, it is very difficult to establish if the
photographs themselves exist.
One of the more surprising findings of our work was that the ar-
chaic collections of glass plate negatives are not as valued a resource in
Siberia as they have become in Western Europe or North America. The
photographic collections that we encountered were often not cata-
logued; many were housed in their original cardboard box packaging
at the bottom of dusty shelving or in basement storerooms (Figure 24).
Those collections that are curated had been created for a specific pur-
pose such as an exhibition to mark the anniversary of a particular city,
institution, or person. These curated collections, while easier to access,
are often barren of attribution as the images were often extracted from
their primeval box without taking note of the references or names
printed on the lids. In one of the more extreme examples, we were told
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Picturing Central Siberia
that one central Siberian museum had no collections at all because it
was thought they had been destroyed during the Great Patriotic War.
However, by the end of the project newly discovered boxes yielded
one of the richest contributions to our project, with photographic neg-
atives numbering in the thousands.
There are a number of reasons why many of these collections are
not better known and better respected. The first reason is technical. It
is very difficult to work with a glass plate negative today as most insti-
tutions no longer have the appropriate equipment to create positive
images of these fragile and oddly sized plates. Furthermore, the
process of creating a contact-print also involves mixing wet chemicals
as well as sourcing materials which are no longer produced or are dif-
ficult to find. By taking advantage of contemporary digital imaging
technology, in our case a compliment of computer system and high-
end scanner, and by making careful choices in the planning stages we
have overcome these obstacles. Indeed, this use of equipment has the
advantage of recruiting a new generation of young archivists who now
are enthusiastically working with these collections.
The second reason for the neglect of this unique visual record is in-
stitutional. Collections of photographs were typically assembled by a
state or society-sponsored expedition, which also collected fieldnotes,
maps, drawings, composed reports, letters, and indices to the collec-
tion. The structure of the late-Soviet archival process is such that mate-
rial from these expeditions was curated by "type." Paper archives were
more likely deposited in the regional state archive often under the name
of the institution that sponsored the travel (for example, the Russian
Geographical Society, or the Committee of the North). The visual por-
tion of the archive would be curated by the regional museum in that
city. There, within that museum, the material would also fall under the
responsibility of a specific curator for photographs. If the expedition
also generated drawings, those would be curated by a curator for graphic
art. Although there was no central policy that stated that each of these
institutions or individuals had to devise their own system of classifica-
tion, this unfortunately was often the rule. Most of the curated collec-
tions we worked with would, for example, be organized under the title
of "The First Five-Year Plan" or "Cadres from Ranks of the Indigenous
Peoples of the North." In order to find and then document photographs
we often relied on the established informal social networks of individ-
uals who held a life history of experience and knowledge of the record
of exhibits in the museum and across institutions. Such experts were
invaluable for their connections to archivists and local historians who
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David C. Anderson and Craig Campbell
in turn were familiar with the landscape of the paper documents held
in the neighboring state archives or libraries. To some degree the col-
lections that were merely housed by, but not curated by, museums
were easier to work with because the assembled glass plates (often in
original packaging) contained at least an implicit proximal system of
classification. Here again digitization helped to create sets and lists of
scanned photographs that could be easily shared with local scholars or
displayed on laptop computers when reading files at other institutions.
Another explanation for the neglect of the photographic collec-
tions is the field of scholarly practice. If we remember that many of
these photographs were taken at a time of revolutionary social, eco-
nomic, and institutional upheaval it is not difficult to imagine how col-
lections of photographs could become fragmented and dispersed.
Technical Overview
As implied above, digital imaging is an important technique for im-
proving access to these collections by making these images both visible
and portable. However until this project was established there was no
sustained research into the appropriate method for capturing images
preserved on media common to Imperial Russia and the early Soviet
period. Archival science, not least of all digital imaging is still a "raw"
science without internationally accepted standards. The quality of the
digital image generated depends to some extent on the purpose to which
it will be used. Quickly generated thumbnail-size images can immedi-
ately improve access to, and knowledge about a specific glass plate,
but they cannot serve as a proxy if that plate should be shattered. More
voluminous multi-megabyte images can serve many purposes, one of
which is the creation of an impressive digital proxy, but their creation
generates further problems such as long-term archiving of the image as
well as controversies over copyright (because to some degree the orig-
inal image consigned as part of a local collection is now superfluous,
especially if it can be reasonably well reproduced for publication). Our
purpose is to share knowledge with the standards and protocols that
most of our partners felt comfortable with in the hopes to encourage
further work in this area.
As stated above, the vast majority of negatives that one finds in the
Siberian public archives today are gelatin dry plate negatives. These
negatives were used predominantly from the 1880s until the 1920s (Ritz-
enthaler 1984: 44). They were made of a pre-prepared light-sensitive
8 Sibirica
