In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos

Film historian Sarkisova (Screening Soviet Nationalities) and sociologist Shevchenko (Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow) scrupulously probe the complex and sometimes paradoxical ways in which home photographs from Soviet-era Russia are regarded and reimagined. According to the authors, viewers “continuously create and recreate interpretations” of photos based on their life experiences, ideologies, and available cultural and political models of memory—for example, some look at their joyful Soviet-era family snapshots and “ponder the larger social and political order” that enabled those happy moments, displaying a “simultaneous detachment from, and attraction to, everyday Soviet life,” while young Russian men and women might mull over old family pictures with a desire to share in “the experiences of the previous generation in the context of shifting... cultural memory.” Photos can also serve as a visual indictment of the government—a picture of a murdered family member functions not as a memento but an implicit accusation that complicates “exuberantly heroic [Soviet] narratives” pushed in state-sponsored textbooks and sanitized histories. Drawing on more than 50 Soviet-era family photo collections and extensive interviews with their owners, this is a stimulating meditation on how historical artifacts preserve and challenge the past. Photos. (Oct.)