Home
photography
history
social science
In Visible Presence

In Visible Presence

Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos

by Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko

$49.95 Hardcover

488 pp., 7 x 9 in, 259 b&w photos

Hardcover
9780262048279
Published: October 3, 2023
Publisher: The MIT Press

$49.95

MIT Press Bookstore
Penguin Random House
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop.org
Indiebound
Indigo
Books a Million

Other Retailers:

MIT Press Bookstore
Penguin Random House
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop.org
Indiebound
Indigo
Books a Million
Amazon.co.uk
Blackwells
Bookshop.org
Foyles
Hive
Waterstones

Request permissions

Description
Author(s)
Praise

An absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past.

A faded image of a family gathered at a festively served dinner table, raising their glasses in unison. A group of small children, sitting in orderly rows, with stuffed toys at their feet and a portrait of Lenin looming over their heads. A pensive older woman against a snowy landscape, her gaze directed lovingly at a tombstone. These are a few of the evocative images in In Visible Presence by Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko, an exquisitely researched book that brings together photographs from Soviet-era family photo archives and investigates their afterlives in Russia.

In Visible Presence explores the photographic images' singular power to capture a fleeting moment by approaching them as points of contestation and possibility. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork and interviews, as well as internet ethnography, media analysis, and case studies, In Visible Presence offers a rich account of the role of family photography in creating communities of affect, enabling nostalgic longings, and processing memories of suffering, violence, and hardship. Together these photos evoke youthful aspirations, dashed hopes, and moral compromises, as well as the long legacy of silence that was passed down from grandparents to parents to children.

With more than 250 black and white photos, In Visible Presence is an astonishing journey into domestic photography, family memory, and the ongoing debate over the meaning of the Soviet past that is as timely and powerful today as it has ever been.

Oksana Sarkisova is Research Fellow at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives and cofounder of the Visual Studies Platform at Central European University. She is the author of Screening Soviet Nationalities and coeditor of Past for the Eyes.

Olga Shevchenko is Paul H. Hunn '55 Professor in Social Studies at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College. She is the author of Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow and the editor of Double Exposure: Memory and Photography.

“Sarkisova and Shevchenko have produced a brilliant study of the powerful ways in which family photographs work, both privately and publicly, to manifest and sacralize the nation. Their case is the Soviet Union, vitally important. But their insights also challenge the reader to compare and contrast. Essential reading for our time.”
Laura Wexler, Charles H. Farnam Professor of American Studies, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Co-Chair of the Women's Faculty Forum at Yale University; author of Tender Violence

“Sarkisova and Shevchenko offer a powerful, materially rich analysis of Soviet-era family photographs as affective touchstones for memory, loss, and absences. It's poignant timeliness in a new era of conflict is a reminder of the power of photography to shape—and be shaped by—the social, cultural, and political landscape.”
Donna West Brett, Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the School of Art, Communication and English, University of Sydney; author of Photography and Place

Books

Authors

On the site

In Visible Presence

Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos

In Visible Presence

Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos

Related Books