Photographic Literacy: Cameras in the Hands of Russian Authors

Photography, introduced to Russia in 1839, was nothing short of a sensation. Its rapid proliferation challenged the other arts, including painting and literature, as well as the very integrity of the self. If Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky greeted the camera with skepticism in the nineteenth century, numerous twentieth-century authors...

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2018
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Photography, which arrived in Russia in 1839, caused a sensation. Its quick spread called into question the legitimacy of other creative disciplines, such as painting and literature, as well as the very essence of the self. If Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky greeted the camera with suspicion in the nineteenth century, many twentieth-century authors embraced it with open arms. As Katherine M. H. Reischl demonstrates in her book Photographic Literacy, authors as diverse as Leonid Andreev, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn picked up the camera and reshaped not only their writing practices but also the realm of literacy itself.

For these authors, a single photograph or a photograph as an illustration is never the final destination; their authorial practices continually evolve and animate the frozen moment. However, just as authors used images to shape the reception of their work and selves, Russian photographers, including Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky and Alexander Rodchenko, used text to shape the reception of their visual work. From the diary to print, the literary word infuses that photographic moment with a personal life story, and frames and reframes it in the writing of history.

In this primer on photographic literacy, Reischl argues for the central role that photography has played in the formation of the Russian literary imagination over the course of roughly seventy years. She traces the visual consciousness of modern Russian literature as captured through the lens of the Russian author-photographer, from image to text and back again.

Weight: 888g
Dimension: 188 x 260 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501724367