Samoyedic Diary: Early Years of Visual Anthropology in the Soviet Arctic

This article describes Georgii and Ekaterina Prokofiev's expedition to the Bol'shezemel'skie Nenets and their experience in filming documentary chronicles. Their records form a unique part of the visual anthropology of the Samoyedic peoples. From extant archival documents it is assume...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Visual anthropology (Journal) 2016-10, Vol.29 (4-5), p.331-359
Main Author: Arzyutov, Dmitry V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Arctic Region
Documentary films
Geography
Landscape ecology
Mountains
Visual culture
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Summary:This article describes Georgii and Ekaterina Prokofiev's expedition to the Bol'shezemel'skie Nenets and their experience in filming documentary chronicles. Their records form a unique part of the visual anthropology of the Samoyedic peoples. From extant archival documents it is assumed that the chronicles were filmed with funding from the cooperation agreement that was signed by Franz Boas and Vladimir Bogoras in New York in 1928. The article offers a reconstruction of Prokofiev's fieldwork experience and his accounts of the early history of collectivization. In this regard the filmed chronicles and a collection of photos taken in the field are treated as a visual conceptualization. Available studies of visual anthropology in the USSR suggest that the documentary chronicles by the Prokofievs, made in 1929-30, are the first cinematic records to be produced by ethnographers in the Soviet Arctic.
ISSN:0894-9468
1545-5920
1545-5920
DOI:10.1080/08949468.2016.1191927