The Concerned Lens: Towards a First Census of Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European Photographs in the Hoover Institution Archives-The Albums

• Published in: Slavic & East European information resources 2020-10, Vol.21 (3-4), p.258-276
• Main Authors: Yoo, Hee-Gwone, Kasinec, Edward
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Archives & records; Censuses; documentary photography in US collections; Hoover Institution Library & Archives; Russian and Eastern European photographic album collections
• ISSN: 1522-8886; 1522-9041
• DOI: 10.1080/15228886.2020.1844380

This note reports on an ongoing project by the compilers to create a census of Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European documentary photographs at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. At this stage in this multi-year effort, the census numbers more than 300 pages and is presently organized in the following manner: Russian/Soviet and East European collection entries (listing an extraordinary 380 collections containing photographs) and four appendices: 1. Recent Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European increments to the photographic collections [9 collections] ; 2. collections microfilmed by Hoover from the Museum of Russian Culture (MRK) in San Francisco and the Holy Trinity Seminary (now Russian History Foundation, Jordanville, N.Y.) [57 collections]; 3. an index of photographic albums [50 collections, containing a total of 161 albums]; and 4. a sampling of photography albums from the Art Vault of the Hoover Library. While there are plans to make the full census available to the scholarly public in the near future, this note reproduces only the index of separately compiled albums (number 3 above), as well as a limited number of thumbnail sample images from some of the more important albums reviewed from sight.