Military Photography and the Russian Conquest of Turkestan in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century: Unwillingness or Inability to Depict Violence?

• In Event: Negotiating the Colonial Gaze: Russian and Soviet Visual Culture in Domestic and International Contexts

Abstract

While the early stages of the military campaigns were photographed (such as the "Historical" section of the Turkestan Album and several albums dedicated to the Khivan campaign of 1873), Mikhail Skobelev’s campaign against the Turkmen Tekke was unrecorded. This presentation will explore these aspects, focusing on the role and place of photography in the Russian Empire’s conquest of the region and the specific ways in which it represented—or failed to represent—acts of violence.

Author

• Svetlana Gorshenina, CNRS (France) / Sorbonne U (France)