Photographs of Russia’s Past

Photographs of Russia’s Past in the Age of Instagram: Photographs are among the historical documents most in play on the internet. As more historical institutions and the public at large compile online photo-archives, images of the past are increasingly available, though often detached from their original contexts.  Photo-objects are reduced on the internet to mere images that often occupy the same visual space as the countless other photographs disseminated through social media.  This paper examines the intersection between photographs of Russia’s past and their online dissemination in the present, as well as the consequences of this encounter. In particular, the author explores how current technologies, media platforms and mobile communication habits affect how historical photo-documents are used and interpreted. In post-Soviet Russia, pictures of the past offer an evocative source of mythmaking. At the same time, a young generation of online consumers is free to explore and re-interpret images of the Soviet Union unbiased by Cold War politics and ideology. In the absence of authoritative, shared media outlets, the very notion of iconicity or an art-historical canon loses traction as people use and “like” images for reasons divorced from official histories. Photography remains a powerful means of social communication today as it did a century ago. With the invention of the internet, however, the value of individual photos has shifted, and so accordingly has the way we evaluate the pictured past.