Authors : Ramina O. Abilova and Oleg V. Sinitsin
Abstract: From beginning of the 2000s, the interest to the problem of functioning post-mortem photography in the urban and rural culture has become more active. The study analyzes the Russian historiography of post-mortem photography via the method of historiographic analysis and synthesis. The results have shown that the Russian investigators have studied the photographic experience relating to funeral photos including the circumstances of their emergence, the development of iconographic subjects, the evolution of their meaning, the conversion of post-mortem photography from public sphere of society into private. In historiography, it is observed a particular path of development of post-mortem photography in Russia, for which, as distinct from the occidental culture, it is not characteristic to depict the deceased as “living persons”. The specialists correlated the post-mortem photos with the phenomenon of memory and reminiscences, analyzed the mechanism of their interaction; also elicited the evolution of attitude toward the post-mortem photography in Russia during XX century and the central tendency of its contemporary perception in society. In conclusion, the study represents the perspectives of investigating the phenomenon of post-mortem photography in the Russian historiography.
Ramina O. Abilova and Oleg V. Sinitsin, 2015. Post-Mortem Photography in the Russian Historiography. The Social Sciences, 10: 1910-1914.