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Ananiev, Vitaly; Katsaridou, Iro. This obscure object of desire: object, photography, museum and damaged churches

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Section: Commentarii / Articles

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For citation: Ananiev, Vitaly; Katsaridou, Iro. This obscure object of desire: object, photography, museum and damaged churches, in Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2018. № 2. Pp. 5-24. DOI https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2018.201.

Title of the article  This obscure object of desire: object, photography, museum and damaged churches
Authors Ananiev, Vitaly — PhD in History, Assistant Professor, Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; OrcID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7413-6339; ResearcherID J-2692-2013;
Katsaridou, Iro — PhD in Art History, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; ScopusID 24080113500
In the section  Commentarii / Articles
Year 2018 Issue  2 Pages  5-24
Type of article RAR Index UDK; BBK  069; 79.1 Index DOI  https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2018.201
Abstract The paper focuses on a collection of photographs recently (2016) donated to the Museum of Byzantine Culture of Thessaloniki, Greece, by Georges Kiourtzian, a Byzantine scholar associated with the College de France in Paris. The 17 mounted silver-prints date from the October Revolution of 1917 and portray the destruction by bombardments of churches and other monuments in the Kremlin, Moscow. Once part of the archive of Thomas Whittemore, the American Byzantine scholar, the photographs were discarded by the Byzantine Library in Paris, only to be collected by Georges Kiourtzian and then to find their way to the collection of the Museum of Byzantine Culture.
This paper sheds light on the complicated itinerary of those photographs: from their production as documentation, to their use as propaganda material, to the Byzantine Library and their eventual discarding, and finally to their new life as museum artefacts in the Museum of Byzantine Culture. The disputed narratives of the photographs are revealed, along with challenges and potentials that reorganization and integration in this recent museum presents for unravelling contested dynamics of the collection.
Keywords  thing, object, photography, rubbish theory, biography of object
Full text version of the article. Article language  English
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Tags: museum collections, object, photography, rubbish theory, thing, thing in history, ANANIEV V. G., KATSARIDOU IRO

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