Following the socialist revolution, a colossal shift in everyday
realities began in the 1920s and '30s in the former Russian empire.
Faced with the Siberian North, a vast territory considered
culturally and technologically backward by the revolutionary
government, the Soviets confidently undertook the project of
reshaping the ordinary lives of the indigenous peoples in order to
fold them into the Soviet state. In "Agitating Images," Craig
Campbell draws a rich and unsettling cultural portrait of the
encounter between indigenous Siberians and Russian communists and
reveals how photographs from this period complicate our
understanding of this history.
"Agitating Images" provides a glimpse into the first moments of
cultural engineering in remote areas of Soviet Siberia. The
territories were perceived by outsiders to be on the margins of
civilization, replete with shamanic rituals and inhabited by
exiles, criminals, and "primitive" indigenous peoples. The Soviets
hoped to permanently transform the mythologized landscape by
establishing socialist utopian developments designed to incorporate
minority cultures into the communist state. This book delves deep
into photographic archives from these Soviet programs, but rather
than using the photographs to complement an official history,
Campbell presents them as anti-illustrations, or intrusions, that
confound simple narratives of Soviet bureaucracy and power. Meant
to agitate, these images offer critiques that cannot be explained
in text alone and, in turn, put into question the nature of
photographs as historical artifacts.
An innovative approach to challenging historical interpretation,
"Agitating Images" demonstrates how photographs go against accepted
premises of Soviet Siberia. All photographs, Campbell argues,
communicate in unique ways that present new and even contrary
possibilities to the text they illustrate. Ultimately, "Agitating
Images" dissects our very understanding of the production of
historical knowledge.
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