Metadata: photographic images
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Geographic Society
- Holding institution (official language):
- Русское географическое общество
- Postal address:
- 190000, Russia, St. Petersburg, per. Grivtsova, d. 10, litera A
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-62-82
- Web address:
- http://www.rgo.ru/ru
- Email:
- rgo@rgo.ru
- Reference number:
- Category 112
- Title:
- photographic images
- Title (official language):
- Фотографии
- Creator/accumulator:
- Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society
- Date(s):
- 1640/1956
- Language:
- Russian
- German
- French
- English
- Italian
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 2,047 storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
-
Documents in the fonds are in Russian, German, French, English, Italian and Yiddish in Roman transliteration. The category constitutes a collection of visual materials pertaining to various regions of the Russian Empire and thereafter the USSR, including photographic images showing views of Russian (European and Asian) cities; collections of museum exhibit items; photographic images from expeditions, and in particular, I. Kordysh’s “An Ethnographic Album of Little Russia” (Kiev, undated); albums with views and population types of Central Asia and Kazakhstan prepared by A. L. Kun “on orders of Turkestan Governor-General First General-Adjutant K. P. von Kaufman” (1871-72) [see also the description of the Prints Department of the National Library of Russia]; etc. Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture, registered mainly in op. 1, may be provisionally divided into the following thematic groups:
1) Collections of photographic images consisting of materials from Imperial Russian Geographic Society expeditions to the western territory or donated to the society by authors, including a significant collection of photographic images by M. O. Greim, and in particular, the leather-bound album “Views of the City of Kamenets-Podol’skii,” the centre of the cover of which features a metal inlay with a bas-relief of the city; the album was donated to the Imperial Russian Geographic Society by the author, and includes a series of photographic prints pasted onto sheets of cardboard that depict the Jewish suburb of Karvasary and the building of the fortress-like synagogue in the town of Gusiatina; as well as series of snapshots titled “Views of Podolia” (showing the Jewish suburb of Karvasary; undated) and “Types of Podolia. photographic images by M. O. Greim,” which includes photographic images captioned “Jews Praying”; “A Jew Praying in the Moonlight”; “A Jew Weighing Silver,” with a subscript in Yiddish (in Roman transliteration): “Gute fein silber” (“Good, pure silver”); “A Jewish School [cheder] in the Podolia Province”; and “Artist’s Model and Painter,” which shows a Jewish man in traditional attire and an artist painting his portrait (1883-84).
Other collections include: “photographic images and Drawings of the Volhynia Province Collected by A. Krivoshapkin,” one of the photographic images in which depicts the fortress-like synagogue in the city of Lutsk, and is captioned: “The Little Castle of Lutsk, Now a Jewish House of Prayer”; one can see in the photo, next to the building, a group of Jews in traditional attire (c. 1898); “Belorussian Counties of the Smolensk Province,” which has photographic images showing views of the town of Monastyrshchina; Jewish homes and homesteads; a Jewish footman in a noble house; a Jewish tradesman, tailor, carpenter; and group photographic images of Jewish residents of the town (1898); a series of visual materials titled “Types of Structures of Berdichev County, Kiev Province,” which contains drawings by Elena Rusova of three wooden synagogues in the towns of Zozov (in Ukrainian, Zoziv), Vakhnivtsy (Vakhnivtsi), and Priluki; as well as several ethnographic photographic images of Jews (latter half of the 19th c.); etc.
2) Collections of photographic images consisting of materials from Imperial Russian Geographic Society expeditions to Central Asia, including “An Ethnographic Album of the Kul’dzha District and the Semirech’e Province,” which has over a hundred photographic images; four cards (with two photographic images on each) feature anthropological portraits (to the waist) of Jewish men and women (1880s); photographic images of Bukharan Jews and scenes from Jewish life are found mainly in albums prepared on the orders of Turkestan Governor-General K. P. von Kaufman, including three cards with depictions of a synagogue, pupils of a Jewish school, and a family of Bukharan Jews; the “Turkestan Album” has two portraits of Jewish women (young and middle-aged), as well as a depiction of a young Jewish man captioned “Mula Iskhak” (1871-72). A series of photographic images titled “Central Asia” includes a snapshot labelled “A Jew,” which shows a man in a kippah and a cloth robe with narrow stripes; and there are two more photographic images that, while uncaptioned, may be defined as depicting Jews, insofar as they show an old man with payot in embroidered headwear that seems to be something between a skullcap and a kippah (latter half of the 19th c.).
- Archival history:
- The Russian Geographic Society (RGO) was founded by imperial decree of Emperor Nicholas I and on recommendation of Interior Minister L. A. Perovskii on 6 (18) August 1845. The idea to establish the society was conceived by Admiral Baron F. P. Litke (subsequently head of the Imperial Academy of Sciences), tutor of Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich, the future first chairman of the RGO. The mission of the RGO was to “assemble and direct the best young minds of Russia toward a comprehensive study of their native land.” The RGO combined specialists in geography and allied sciences, as well as travel enthusiasts, ethnographers, and public figures. In the course of its activities it was renamed on several occasions: from 1845-50, it was called the Russian Geographic Society (RGO); from 1850-1917, the Imperial Russian Geographic Society (IRGO); from 1917-25, the Russian Geographic Society (RGO); from 1925-38, the State Geographic Society (GGO); from 1938-92, the Geographic Society of the USSR (the All-Union Geographic Society; VGO); from 1992-95, the Russian Geographic Society; and from 1995 to the present, the All-Russian Public Organization “Russian Geographic Society” (VOO “RGO”). At different times, the society has been headed by representatives of the royal family, famous travellers, researchers, and statesmen. The hundreds of expeditions organised by the society have played an important role in the colonisation of the Arctic, Siberia, the Far East, Central Asia, Australia, and the world’s oceans and seas. Honorary members of the IRGO / RGO have included statesmen, public figures, and scientists of Russia – P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, Count S. Iu. Witte, N. I. Vavilov, V. I. Vernadskii, Baron F. P. Vrangel’, A. M. Gorchakov, V. I. Dal’, V. A. Obruchev – as well as Leopold II of Belgium, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid, Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden, King Oscar II of Norway, Shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia, Baron Ferdinand Richthofen, Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, and Thor Heyerdahl. Since 2009, the president of the Russian Geographic Society has been RF Defense Minister S. K. Shoigu. In 2010, the RGO Board of Trustees was established; it is headed by RF Pres. Vladimir Putin.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society began to form archival collections (categories) in connection with the development, publication, and distribution to all provinces of the Russian Empire of seven thousand copies of the society’s ethnographic agenda. These were in the form of instructions for persons interested in providing the Russian Geographic Society with ethnographic materials. The agenda proposed that ethnographic descriptions of the peoples inhabiting the empire be prepared according to the following subjects: “1) with regard to appearance, 2) on language, 3) on everyday home life, 4) on features of social life, 5) on mental and moral capabilities and education, 6) on folk traditions and monuments.” The publication and distribution of the ethnographic agenda led to the Russian Geographic Society receiving a large quantity of ethnographic descriptions, and not only from members of the society, but also from local officials, representatives of the urban and rural intelligentsia (clergy, teachers, doctors), and peasants. In 1853 alone, the Imperial Russian Geographic Society received approximately two thousand manuscripts from various provinces. The materials received were originally stored in the society’s library or in the archives of its departments. Between 1863-67, the archives of the society’s departments were unified into a single overall Research Archive of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society. F. I. Istoman, secretary of the ethnography department, began the process of cataloguing the archive’s manuscripts in 1886. He systematised the manuscripts on Russia as a whole and set apart collections (categories) of manuscripts pertaining to major administrative-territorial units. Materials received by the society’s archive subsequently went to supplement already-formed categories. These were mainly materials sent from the local level containing answers to questionnaires found in various society agendas developed in the period of 1866-1913, for example, the “Agenda for the collection of local ethnographic information,” “The agenda for the collection of folk legal customs,” “The agenda for the collection of information on ethnography,” etc. In the 1910s, the ethnographer D. K. Zelenin analysed and described documents housed in the categories of the Research Archive; the inventories he compiled were published as A Description of the Manuscripts of the Research Archive of the Russian Geographic Society (pts. 1–3., St. Petersburg, 1914–16). The materials of the Research Archive were originally arranged mostly by province of the Russian Empire; in 1895, new categories started to be formed that included documents that did not pertain to any particular location or province; and collections of graphic materials started to be formed as well.
- Access points: locations:
- Central Asia
- Kamenets-Podol’skii
- Kazakhstan
- Kiev province
- Lutsk
- Monastyrshchina
- Podolia
- Podolia province
- Priluki
- Russia
- St Petersburg
- Turkestan
- USSR
- Volhynia province
- Access points: persons/families:
- Greim, M. O.
- Kordysh, I.
- Krivoshapkin, A.
- Kun, A. L.
- Rusova, Elena
- von Kaufman, K. P.
- System of arrangement:
- The category includes three inventories (op. 1 – photographic images and drawings; op. 2 – microfilm; op. 3 – maps, charts, sketches, and photographic images) systematised by subject and according to the alphabetical-thematic principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
