Photoarcheology: Soviet Everyday Life in Photographs and Artefacts

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Abstract

Photoarcheology: Soviet Everyday Life in Photographs and Artefacts (photoarcheology.org) is a digital archive of Soviet family photographs that uses the Omeka content management system. Aside from the small private collections of the curators, the bulk of the archive consists of photographs from the albums and collections of my co-curator in Moscow, Vladimir Sergeev. This unique collection consists of “found” artifacts that Sergeev rescued from abandoned dwellings and trashcans. Sergeev scanned and put on-line about 10,000 photographs, most of them dating back to a period between 1930 and 1985. The goal of Photoarcheology is to curate these images with the proper historical description of their content and provenance for the benefit of the English-speaking researchers in the humanities and social studies. Starting with my own research, my goal is to use Photoarcheologyarchive as a platform for collaborative projects with other researchers in humanities, who are interested in Russia and analyzing photographic evidence.

Author

• Svetlana A Rasmussen, U of Nebraska-Lincoln