Photographic Reading Lessons: Club Environments in Soviet Uzbekistan

• In Event: Visual Culture in Central Asia II: Spectatorship and Consumption

Abstract

This paper examines the proliferation of photographs of club environments in Soviet Uzbekistan and explores the symbolic role of the club as a site: not only for learning to take photographs but also providing instruction in how to give photographs meaning through intermedial, interactive displays. By situating the work of photo circles (fotokruzhki) within the broader club environments they belonged to, I show how photographic instruction relied on club spaces that were designed to be immersive media environments, with an educational mission primarily organized around forms of literacy that were photographic as well as political.

Author

• Alexandra Dennett, Harvard U