A photographic document is a document created by a photographic method. The appearance of photographic documents dates back to the 30s of the 19th century and is associated with the invention of photography. The essential feature of the photographic document is that this kind of document occurs at the moment of events and at the place of events. This feature gives this type of document great value. Photographic documents are clear, accurate, due to which they are widely used in many areas of human activity, and in particular, in historiography. Special photographic documents are in the family photo archive, which contains many photographs reflecting various periods in the life of a person and the state as a whole. Based on the analysis of these photographic documents, one can trace the transformations in everyday life, customs, spiritual atmosphere of the era that took place in certain historical periods. On the example of photographic documents from my family archive, we will try to trace the various stages of the life of our state in the 20th century. The first photographic document that has been preserved in my family archive dates back to 1908 and reflects the specifics of mores and the changes that took place in Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, industrialization began, which was accompanied by an industrial revolution and the migration of the rural population to the cities. In the photo we see representatives of two different generations with different ways of life. The head of the family (my great-great-great-grandfather) is dressed in a formal jacket, gray trousers and leather boots. He has a bushy beard and a neat shirt. His wife (my great-great-great-grandmother) is wearing a toe-length dress and a headscarf. Their appearance reflects the traditions and customs of traditional patriarchal Russia. They are characteristic representatives of the peasant population. In the background we see their children, who look completely different. Voronov Alexey Afanasyevich, my great-great-grandfather, is dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt, his sister is in a white blouse and a dark skirt. They are already typical representatives of the urban population. It is important to note that the location of the people in the photograph speaks of old Russian traditions. The head of the family was supposed to sit on a chair in the center, and his wife next to him. Children were supposed to be behind their parents. The next photographic document dates from 1912. It depicts my great-great-grandmother Smirnova Olga Efimova with her friends. The girls have strictly tied hair and elegant city dresses. During the analysis of photographic documents of the early twentieth century, I realized that the photo salons of those times were considered cultural institutions. Photographing was, although not a big, but important event in the life of every person. The following photographic document refers to the 30s of the twentieth century. The revolution of 1917 took place in the country, the Civil War ended. The social support of the new government was considered the working class. By this moment, the proletarian intelligentsia began to emerge, one of the representatives of which was my great-great-grandfather Zaruba Ilya Ilya. Without a special higher education, he reached the position of chairman of the collective farm and director of the timber industry. Great-great-grandfather is dressed in a dark "intellectual" coat, a dark gray beret, and at the same time, dirty shoes can be seen on him. Consider the young man standing next to him. He is wearing a canvas shirt, tunic, riding breeches and boots. Thus, two essential features can be distinguished in the new intelligentsia. On the one hand, she tried to look presentable, but on the other hand, people of this class remained ordinary workers, since they all came from the people, from simple peasants, in whose family there had never been “noble” roots. This characteristics new social class and a key feature of photography. It is also a reflection of the character of the era. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the clothes of people of the 30s were semi-military. This can be explained by the fact that the process of industrialization was going on at a rapid pace in the country, accompanied by preparations for a large-scale war. Consider another photographic document from 1938. It depicts a typical Soviet family of that period. Before the establishment of Soviet power, women were mainly engaged in family and children, but during the Soviet era, the attitude towards women changed. She had to take care of both the children and the household, and at the same time work. As a result, if before the USSR the average number of children in a family was 10-15 people, then under the Soviet regime this figure decreased several times and a family with 3-4 children became the norm. The photo shows my great-grandmother Natalya Ivanovna Nikipelova and her 3 children Vladimir, Mikhail and Valentina. Great-grandmother is dressed in a modest dress and jacket. The brothers are wearing identical shirts sewn by their great-grandmother, and galoshes are on their feet. My grandmother is wearing a sundress and children's shoes. Photo documents of the late 40s - early 50s have been preserved in my photo archive. In the first photo we see two veterans of the Great Patriotic War. On the left is my great-grandfather Ivan Alekseevich Voronov. Grandfather has two medals and the Order of the Red Banner on his chest. Both are dressed in the military uniform of that time: a cap with a star, a tunic, a belt with a gold star on the belt, riding breeches and leather boots. These are two winners of an unforgettable war. Despite the unprecedented difficulties that plagued the Soviet people throughout the war, they managed to survive. You can be proud of them, the heroes of the Second World War! Another photographic document shows an agricultural detachment, consisting mainly of women. This is explained by the fact that during the war the number of able-bodied population decreased by almost a third, many men died at the front. Therefore, women had to work in production, on the collective farm and in other public works. A similar situation was observed in the cities, women were actively recruited to work in factories. Many young girls aspired to climb the corporate ladder. It was a way of self-realization of women in the USSR in the 50s. In the photo of this period, my grandmother is sitting in the middle against the general background of the Komsomol team. Let's take a look at the clothes. The peculiarity of the girls' attire is the dresses of two shades - white or black. This is due to the fact that the state sought to "stamp" the daily life of a person, including clothing. Therefore, most wore neutral colors. Mostly they were dark and white colors. characteristic element appearance girls is the presence of the Komsomol badge on the chest. Joining this organization was one of the most important stages in the life of every Soviet citizen. After all, becoming a member of the Komsomol meant entering the beginning of an adult path. Of course, not everyone was admitted to the VKLSM, and the candidate had to go through a serious selection according to moral and ideological criteria. Komsomol members proudly wore the Komsomol badge. The next series of photographs characterizes the Soviet education system, which was supposed to solve not only general educational issues, but also to instill the skills of useful work, to spread communist ideology. All Soviet children went to school and wore the same uniform. For boys, these are shirts, trousers, ties, for girls - student dresses, aprons, bows. Schoolchildren from a certain age united in squads - pioneer or October. Schoolchildren of grades 1-3 became Octoberers, and pioneers of grades 4-7. When joining the ranks of the Octobrists, the children were given a badge - a five-pointed star with a children's portrait of Lenin, and the pioneers were given a red tie, which we see in the photographs of this period. The next series of photographic documents is dedicated to the 1960s. Most of the population worked in factories and collective farms. Holidays It was customary to celebrate in the circle of party comrades, colleagues. The state issued vouchers to sanatoriums, on excursions to other cities of the USSR. So, a simple Soviet rural teacher and my great-aunt Voronova Evdokia Alekseevna visited many cities of the USSR on vouchers from the party: Pyatigorsk (Stavropol Territory), Goryachiy Klyuch (Krasnodar Territory), Riga (Latvia), Nalchik and others. 1970s Extremely popular during this period was the military profession, which made it possible to move up the social ladder. And to take part in the parade on Red Square was considered the peak of a career. In 1977, my grandfather Zaruba Vladimir Ilyich managed to attend such a parade. This is shown in one of the photographs. Thus, on the basis of photographs from the family archive, we were able to clearly trace the transformations that took place in society in the 20th century.

Zoya Maksimovna Rubinina

Researcher
State Historical Museum

It is difficult to overestimate A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky the principle of "recognition of someone else's animation". Only if the historian is guided in his work with sources precisely by this principle, if he tries to understand the other with whom he is separated by time and (often) space, history becomes a science about the past of people, and not a study of structures created by people. This is most evident when working with sources of personal origin. In this case, the historian often becomes for the people of the past the only opportunity to gain an afterlife.

The paradox lies in the fact that, for all their attractiveness, sources of personal origin traditionally attract less research attention than official sources. Moreover, this is consistent with the basic principle of acquisition of state domestic archives, where the main sources of acquisition are government agencies. Sources of personal origin have the opportunity to attract the attention of researchers if they are associated with life and work. famous people of the past. Family archives of the so-called. "ordinary people", as a rule, are not popular among professional historians and become an object of purely public interest.

If the above is true for written sources of personal origin, namely, written sources have been and remain a priority for historians, then this applies all the more to family photographs and, in particular, to a family photographic archive as a historical source.

The history of photography as a whole can be called a peripheral topic for Soviet historiography. As a rule, art critics were engaged in it, and there were not many works on this topic. In recent decades, this topic has become quite popular. It can be called truly interdisciplinary, since art historians, historians, psychologists, etc. deal with the history of photography. On the one hand, the topic is thus studied in the context of various scientific disciplines, which makes it possible to consider it comprehensively. On the other hand, it cannot be called a priority for historical science. In particular, this applies to the study of photography as a historical source. A more than serious exception to the rule in this case are the works of V.M. Magidov, but they are dedicated to the hypersystem of cinema-photo-phono documents (KFFD). In this case, photography is considered as part of a general system, although, of course, it has its own characteristics as a historical source. Also worth mentioning are the works of V.M. Magidov devoted to individual photographic monuments, but there are not very many similar works. As for family photographic archives, as far as I know, there are no source studies in Russian historical science devoted to this type of monuments. The situation is quite understandable: since the topic of the history of photography as a whole has long been peripheral, its development in recent decades began, of course, with the publication of works of a general nature, the publication of masterpieces of Russian photography from the archival and museum collections of the country and the rethinking of the national photographic heritage at the level certain types photos . At the same time, we are talking about a complex and very remarkable type of historical sources, but in order not to be limited to this kind of general phrases and common characteristic, which in this case will look like a rabbit pulled out of a hat, we will consider the features of this type of historical sources using the example of the photographic archive of the Levitsky family from the collection of the State Historical Museum (hereinafter - the State Historical Museum).

ill. 1. Alexander Konstantinovich Levitsky and Elena Dmitrievna Levitskaya with their son Sergei. August 21, 1866 Photographic studio "Photograph by E. Kiriakoff".

The Levitskys are a Polish noble family, known since the middle of the 16th century. Representatives of this genus were patrimonials. Served in the army. They received royal awards for their (usually military) service. They held positions in the government system. In the 18th century, representatives of this genus found themselves on the territory of the Russian Empire. These are, as a rule, small landowners, low-ranking military officers, low-ranking officials, and Orthodox priests. Thus, the average Polish gentry family turns into an impoverished Russian noble family. There is nothing surprising that, as often happened in the middle of the 19th century, such a family became the progenitor of a family that can be attributed to the Russian raznochintsy intelligentsia.

The materials of the family archive, stored in the State Historical Museum, allow highlighting the history of three generations of the Levitsky family, starting from the 1830s. to the 1970s The first generation is represented by the family of a gymnasium teacher who lived in Kerch, the son of a parish priest, hereditary nobleman Alexander Konstantinovich Levitsky (1833 or 1835 - 1869), married to the daughter of a wealthy official, tradesman Dmitry Lukich Pospolitaki Elena (1844 - not earlier than 1934) (ill. 1) . The materials of the family archive and the identified published sources also make it possible to partially reconstruct the biography of brother A.K. Levitsky - Philip Levitsky (born 1837) - inspector of the Sandomierz gymnasium from the city of Kamenets-Podolsky.

The second generation of the family is represented by three sons of A.K. and E.D. Levitsky and their families. All three brothers received higher education and worked in typical "intelligentsia" professions. So, the eldest son Sergei Alexandrovich (February 2, 1866 - 1945) was a sworn attorney. Lived in Moscow. He was one of the founders of Prechistensky courses for workers. He was married to the noblewoman Aglaida Listovskaya, the great-granddaughter of the famous figure of Catherine's times, Count Zavadovsky. They had two sons: Yuri and Anatoly. In 1918 the family emigrated to France. The middle of the Levitsky brothers - Vyacheslav Alexandrovich (February 3, 1867 - August 5, 1936), after graduating from Moscow University in 1890, became a zemstvo doctor. He worked in the Moscow province (since 1896 - a sanitary doctor in the Podolsk region) (ill. 2). Sanitary hygiene at work has become his specialization and life's work. For many years, Vyacheslav Alexandrovich was engaged in the search and implementation of a mercury-free method of hat production. In 1914 he became the head of the Sanitary Bureau of the Moscow Provincial Zemstvo, and also during the First World War he organized a network of hospitals for the wounded in Moscow Gubernia. Since 1900 he was friendly with the Ulyanov family. Participated in the distribution of the Iskra newspaper. After the October Revolution, at the personal request of V.I. Lenin became one of the creators of the industrial hygiene system in the young Soviet state: in particular, he was a consultant to the People's Commissariat for Health on factory hygiene, deputy director of the Sanitary and Hygienic Institute of the NKZ (1921), creator and first director of the Institute for Occupational Safety of the NKT, NKZ and the Supreme Economic Council (1925) , one of the editors of the journal "Labor Hygiene" (1923). He was married to Maria Alexandrovna Shlyapina (1874 - June 18, 1936), who was a paramedic before her marriage. They had two daughters (ill. 3). The younger brother of Sergei and Vyacheslav - Alexander Alexandrovich Levitsky (January 1, 1870 - June 14, 1919) was an agronomist. He worked in the provincial zemstvo of the Taurida province; after the October Revolution - in the Kerch land department. He was shot by the White Guards in 1919. He had a wife, Claudia, and a son, Alexander.

ill. 2. Vyacheslav Alexandrovich Levitsky at his desk. Presumably 1910s.

The third generation of the family is represented by the daughters of V.A. and M.A. Levitskikh Irina and Elena and Elena's husband Dmitry Skvortsov (ill. 4). In this case, not only the era is changing, but also the social group: the life of both sisters and D.A. Skvortsova was devoted to art.

The elder sister Irina Vyacheslavovna became a teacher of choreography. During the Great Patriotic War she was the artistic director of the front-line concert brigade, in 1948 she worked in the Primorsky Territory, although before and after that she lived and worked in Moscow. Irina Vyacheslavovna had a family, about which we know only the name of her husband - Nikolai Listovsky. We do not know the years of life of I.V. Levitskaya. It can only be asserted that in 1976 Irina Vyacheslavovna was still alive and working. The younger sister Elena Vyacheslavovna Levitskaya (1901 - December 1978) became a dramatic actress. She worked in various Moscow theaters. During the war she was in the front-line concert brigade. In 1944 she was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Moscow". After 1949 E.V. Levitskaya was forced to give up her career in order to care for her seriously ill husband. widower, in last years Elena Vyacheslavovna spent a lot of her life perpetuating the memory of her father. E.V. Levitskaya was married to actor, director and theater designer Dmitry Alekseevich Skvortsov (October 5, 1901 - 1969). Like Elena Vyacheslavovna, Dmitry Alekseevich worked in various Moscow theaters and was a member of the front-line concert brigade. YES. Skvortsov was an incredibly talented amateur photographer. Unfortunately, in 1949 Dmitry Alekseevich became disabled and could no longer work.

ill. 3. Vyacheslav Alexandrovich Levitsky with his wife Maria Alexandrovna and daughters Irina and Elena. 1900s

With regard to the history of the family reconstructed from the materials of the family archive, one can speak, among other things, of the manifestation of characteristic social processes. Representatives of the Polish gentry family in the 18th century found themselves on the territory of the Russian Empire, in the 19th century. become part of the poor Russian nobility. One of the representatives of the family, the son of a parish priest and a gymnasium teacher, marries the daughter of a wealthy official. Their sons receive a university education, work in "intelligentsia" specialties, are engaged in public and social activities. Their fates are typical of the era: emigration, successful work on the new mode, death during the Civil War. Less characteristic are the fates of the third generation of the family, represented by the daughters of V.A. Levitsky. Here it is necessary to take into account the insufficiency of biographical materials about I.V. Levitskaya and the tragic personal and professional fates of E.V. Levitskaya and D.A. Skvortsov, but even in this case it is possible to reveal the realities of the era through the life of the family (theatrical life of the 1929-1940s, front-line concert brigades). Thus, using the example of the Levitsky family, one can speak of a number of global processes and socio-cultural phenomena of Russian history.

At the same time, the materials of the Levitsky family archive, as well as other identified sources (the published works of F.K. Levitsky, the materials of the personal fund of D.A. Skvortsov at TsMAMLS) make it possible not only to reconstruct the relationship between the realities of the era and family life, but also to analyze the beliefs of family members in context of the beliefs of the social group to which the family belonged. So, it turned out to be possible to identify the relationship between educational and / or initiated social problems Podolsky peasantry by the works of F.K. Levitsky and public and professional activity his nephews. The views of V.A. Levitsky, aimed at helping people, are also reconstructed from his personal correspondence of the 1890s. with M.A. Shlyapina. In this case, we can talk about a certain continuity of generations. The third generation of the family suffers from other professional problems, but here it is possible to analyze the creative views and tastes of D.A. Skvortsov in the context of artistic representations of the 1920s-1930s.

ill. 4. Irina and Elena Levitsky with an unknown person. 1910-1920s Photographer: presumably Alexander Alexandrovich Levitsky. On the back there is an inscription I.V. Levitskaya: “Uncle Sasha filmed with my camera in the dining room in the morning, only he said to look higher and I pray for this God.”

The relationship between the family and the era in which this family lived is only one side of the coin. Each reconstructed biography deals with a unique human destiny, each of which is interesting and significant. This is one of the main features of the family archive as a historical source: it preserves the personalities and destinies of the so-called. "ordinary people" who lived in a certain place at a certain time and, thus, becomes a conductor of relationships from people of the past to people of the present.

In this context, it is possible to analyze the species composition of family archive documents as a monument, where documents are accumulated, on the one hand, characterizing the various relationships of the family as a social group, and, on the other hand, preserving the human, personal relationships of people of the past. This relationship between the typical and the unique, the social and the personal, is also characteristic of the photographic part of the family archive.

The photographic part of the family archive consists of 706 museum items, which include 3 photo albums, 12 negatives (of which: 3 glass negatives and 9 film negatives), 1 paper envelope for negatives, 683 photographic prints, 2 phototypes and 5 postcards . Note that the vast majority of family archive prints are kept as originals. Thus, when analyzing the photographic part of the Levitsky family archive, the main attention will be paid to photographic prints. When classifying the photographic portion of the archive, all items included in it were taken into account, with the exception of photo albums and a negative sleeve, which will be specified where appropriate. The Levitsky family archive accumulated photographs from 1862 to 1976.

The museumification of the Levitsky family archive cannot be called carried out according to industry standards. The last owner of the family archive was Elena Vyacheslavovna Levitskaya, who in the last years of her life was in close contact with the staff of the Central Museum of V.I. Lenin (hereinafter - CML) and employees of the Ulyanov House-Museum in Podolsk. After the death of Elena Vyacheslavovna in December 1978, the employees of the CML (including the current head of the sector visual arts FML Eduard Danilovich Zadiraka) came to the apartment to pick up things and documents bequeathed to the CML E.V. Levitskaya. According to E.D. Tuff, museum workers found a complete rout in the apartment. family albums late XIX - early XX century. were torn apart. Photos and documents are strewn across the floor. Previously, representatives of the housing authorities visited the museum workers' apartment. That the apartment of E.V. Levitskaya - the apartment of one of the close friends of the Ulyanov family, was widely known. E.D. Tuff suggests that they were looking for cash documents and valuables.

Thus, the CML staff had to collect the destroyed Levitsky family archive throughout the apartment and urgently evacuate it to the museum. It should be noted that, for a number of reasons, the CML did not keep a consistent record and description of new receipts. Therefore, a significant part of the photographs accumulated in the CML funds was not registered in accounting documentation museum. This happened with photographs and documents of the Levitsky family archive.

Documents of the family archive were formed into cases and put into a folder, but they were not accepted for museum registration, since the collection of documents, like the vast majority of the CML collections, did not have a permanent custodian at that time. The collection of photographs did not have a custodian until 1998. Therefore, the photographic part of the Levitsky family archive was discovered during the discovery of the collection items in the layout storage in 2002, where it had lain since December 1978 in the same suitcase in which it was brought from apartments E.V. Levitskaya. Only by comparing the inscriptions on the photographs with the composition of the documentary fund of the department, it was possible to establish that we are talking about the photographic part of the Levitsky family archive. Museum processing and research of photographs of the Levitsky family archive began only in the mid-2000s, when the collections of the former CML were already part of the State Historical Museum (since 1993).

Thus, the family archive ended up in the museum collection quite by accident. Neither the owners of the archive, nor the museum staff did not select the monuments for museum storage. On the one hand, the completeness of the Levitsky family archive raises serious doubts, since it was about the evacuation of the placer from the apartment of the late E.V. Levitskaya. On the other hand, the absence of preliminary selection makes it possible not to take into account the fact that the composition of the family archive, before its museumification, was twice assessed for what would supposedly be important to descendants. Moreover, it was appreciated both by the owners themselves (i.e., representatives of society who evaluate the significance of the monument, according to their ideas about history, which are very far from scientific ones), and museum employees (i.e., representatives of the professional community who, voluntarily or involuntarily, pay attention to the expositional attractiveness of objects, their compliance with their own scientific topic, as well as the composition of the already existing collections of the museum, considering how original this or that complex will be for this collection and how much its subject matter corresponds to the profile of the museum as a whole). In other words, when analyzing this family archive, it is possible not to take into account the ideas of people in the 1970s, but to focus only on the time when the monuments were created, which is by no means unimportant when analyzing the species composition of the complex.

Another question is that the attribution of such an original museum complex is difficult. Documents and photographs of the family archive do not always agree with each other. The Levitskys themselves rarely signed their photographs, they did not make a single caption to the pictures in the albums. The last owner of the family archive died childless, and the museum staff had no contacts with other members of the family. Therefore, here we will focus not only on the source possibilities of the family photographic archive, but on the family photographic archive with difficult attribution as a historical source.

Before proceeding to the analysis of the source possibilities of the Levitsky family photographic archive, I would like to note that the photographs of the archive were classified by genre: portrait, landscape photography, genre shots, still life, subject photography. Also, in a separate group, given their sociocultural significance, photo reproductions of portraits of famous people and works of art were singled out. At the same time, personal complexes of family representatives were also identified in the family archive in cases where it was possible. Personal complexes of family members are, in most cases, individual and group portraits of this or that person, as well as portraits with dedicatory inscriptions addressed to him.

Most of the photographic documents of the Levitsky family archive are portraits: 528 items (471 images). Moreover, amateur pictures - only 121 items (106 images). Most individual portraits: professional - 309 items (276 images), and amateur - 69 items (60 images). Chronologically, the portraits of the family archive cover the period from the 1850s to the 1950s, although most of them belong to the 1880s-1920s. Thus, we are dealing, first of all, with a mass studio individual photo portrait of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.

It is known that the portrait for photography of the 19th century, so to speak, is the “main” genre, since it was it that combined photography as a way of depicting and photography as a form of commercial activities. Most of the photographic genres and uses of photography appeared almost simultaneously with its invention. Moreover, because photography was limited in its early days to the techniques available at the time, portraiture is one of the relatively recent genres compared to landscape, still life, and product photography. But it was precisely with him that the development and dissemination of photography for the general population was connected. Of course, the use of photography since its official birth in 1839 has been quite wide: for example, in science, in criminalistics, etc. But the majority of people with similar application of a photo did not adjoin. Therefore, it was commercial photography that was significant for wide social strata. The products of photographic studios are, first of all, portraits, landscape photographs made for sale to tourists, as well as reproductions of portraits of famous people and works of art, and photographic “attractions”. The most demanded of these products were, of course, portraits.

In order not to state unfoundedly that we are talking about a representative set of mass studio photographic portraits of the 1880s - 1910s, I will give data on the place where the portraits were taken and on the photo studios where they were made. So, by the period of the 1880s - 1910s. includes 281 portraits (246 images) made by professional photographers. The shooting location is known for 254 subjects (220 images). 11 portraits (8 images) were made abroad, and one cannot speak of any prevailing toponym. The bulk of the portraits were made on the territory of the Russian Empire, mainly in cities. In general, we are talking about 30 settlements of the Russian Empire. In terms of the number of portraits made in the studio of one city, Kerch and Moscow are in the lead, which is easy to read in the context of family history, just as it is easy in this context to explain the presence in the list of such cities as Kamenetz-Podolsky or Podolsk. Kerch and Moscow portraits can also be considered as a representative group of photographs taken in one provincial city and one capital city. Of course, the above list makes it possible to single out the regions (Crimea, Ukraine, central and southern Russia) in which these cities are located, and to identify a kind of space of geographical ties of the family. You can also talk about a complex of portraits made both in both capitals and in the provinces, and the list includes such large cities of the empire as Kiev and Odessa, and a significant number of Crimean resorts. The picture is complemented by a small set of portraits made in foreign studios.

This complex allows us to talk about well-known domestic photographic studios, as well as about photographic institutions in the province. So, in the family archive, the products of such well-known ateliers of both capitals as: “Photograph by the artist E. Bollinger”, “Photograph by Bergamasco”, “Photograph by K. Shapiro”, “Photograph by A. Lawrence” were deposited (all in the “northern capital”) , photographs by Carl Bergner, “Photograph by Otto Renard”, “Photograph by I. Dyagovchenko”, “Photograph by G.V. Trunov”, “Photograph by M. Konarsky”, “Photograph by Franz Opitz”, “Photograph by V. Chekhovsky”, “Photograph by Dore”, “Photograph by P. Pavlov”, “Photograph by Scherer, Nabholz and Kº” and other Moscow ateliers , as well as "Photograph by M. Greim" in Kamenetz-Podolsky. The history and production of these photographic establishments has been described more than once in the literature. But the products of not so titled photographic establishments were also deposited in the family archive. For example, "Photograph by N. Chesnokov" and "Photograph by A. Yasvoin" in St. Petersburg or products of provincial photo studios (for example, "Photograph by G.L. Shulyatsky" in Kerch or "Photograph by S. Goldenberg" in Yekaterinodar). At the same time, the owners of large photographic establishments were by no means always glorified precisely by portraiture. It was not for mass studio portraits that Mikhail Greim received international awards. The photo "Scherer, Nabgolts and Co." is known for its landscape shots, etc. The composition of the family archive also allows us to speak of such a phenomenon in professional portrait photography as branches of large ateliers in the provinces (“Photography by K. Fischer” in Orenburg and “Photography by V. Chekhovsky” in Saratov and Feodosia).

Only in 248 portraits (205 images) are those portrayed currently identified as representatives of the Levitsky family. 280 portraits (266 images) are portraits of unidentified persons. From the point of view of the history of the Levitsky family, portraits of unidentified persons are interesting as a kind of portrait gallery of the social group to which the family belonged, its social circle. It would be most correct to define this social group as "middle-income citizens engaged in professions that require higher or secondary specialized education." Almost all of those portrayed are in particular dress. There are almost no people in bureaucratic uniforms. V individual cases it is possible to establish the profession of those portrayed (a nurse, an unknown man in the uniform of a railway engineer), but there are few of them, so it cannot be argued that we are talking exclusively about the urban intelligentsia. Moreover, the border between the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy, as well as between the intelligentsia and the "philistinism" is very conditional.

Based on a number of indirect signs, certain conclusions can be drawn about the daily life of this social group. So, some portraits were made in the Crimean or European resorts - quite typical vacation spots for an intellectual (more widely - a city dweller) of average income. Noteworthy in this case is the analysis of those photographic studios where portraits were made. Many photographs were taken in large photographic firms, primarily in Moscow. For example, the above-mentioned ateliers “Photography Doré”, “Photograph by V. Chekhovsky”, “Photograph by G.V. Trunov”, “Photograph by M. Konarsky”, “Photograph by Otto Renard”, “Photograph by P. Pavlov”, “Photograph by Franz Opitz”. The photographic studios of the northern capital are presented much more modestly (there are much fewer portraits made in St. Petersburg, since we are talking about the social circle of the Moscow family): in “Photographs by A. Lawrence”, “Photographs by Bollinger”, “Photographs by Bergamasco”, “Photographs by K. Shapiro" was made literally one portrait at a time. On the other hand, we have already spoken about a representative complex of products from provincial and untitled metropolitan ateliers. At the same time, there are very few enameled photographs, the vast majority of portraits are made in the most common formats (business, office, blank open letter), there is practically no colorized photograph. In other words, it is about social group, whose representatives can afford to shoot in a good photographic studio (as well as the Levitsky family), but these are not the people who are filmed only by chic and fashionable photographers. These are not the people who will pay for additional photographic services (enamelling, coloring, large format, etc.). Thus, the portraits of unidentified persons from the Levitsky family archive are a complex containing certain touches to the portrait of the everyday life of a middle-class domestic city dweller at the turn of the century.

Among the portraits of the Levitsky family archive, it is also difficult to find caricature poses and bulging, almost insane eyes, which contemporaries and researchers write about, and on the other hand, rampant entourage known from literature (although there are certain examples), typical “blunders” in the work of photographers ( the border of the background is visible, the background and the clothes of the portrayed do not match). Caricature poses and bulging eyes are absent, since we are talking about a social group for which photography in the atelier is familiar. At the same time, known from literature and other collections of mass studio photographs of the 1880s-1910s. the standard of posture (the person being portrayed sits or stands so as to hold his back, two-level double portraits, the composition of group portraits, etc.), of course, was preserved. There are different points of view in the literature on the origin of this standard images (painting or theater), but its very existence and its stability are noted by all researchers. The standard methods of portrait photography, which were formed in pre-revolutionary photographic studios, were adopted with some changes in the Soviet studios and existed for many more years. Thus, in relation to photographic portraits of the Levitsky family archive, one can speak of a representative study of portrait standards, but not of a caricature of them. At the same time, we are talking about the formed stable standards of portraiture, which have a great and long future ahead of them.

In the context of comparing studio pre-revolutionary portraits from the Levitsky family archive with well-known examples of “kitsch” and bad taste, from the point of view of contemporaries (abundant use of props to create an image, widespread at least since the beginning of the 20th century (and to this day ) an attraction when the person being portrayed sticks his head into the painted background and finds himself with a naked saber on a dashing horse or at the helm of an airplane, etc. ) it should be noted that the use of such techniques for photographs of a family archive, in general, is uncharacteristic. You can name at most a dozen images, where the image of the person being portrayed is unsuccessfully constructed with the help of props (ill. 5). No one stuck their head into the background at all. As for the painted backdrops that were used for photographic portraits, the Levitsky family archive contains the most typical ones, judging by special literature, samples: forest, mountain lake, antique ruins. At the same time, there are few photographs using drawn backdrops. Basically, these photographic portraits are characterized by the use of neutral backgrounds: dark, more often light. It should also be emphasized that in the family archive there is not a single sample of photographic "kitsch" of the second half of XIX- the beginning of the twentieth century. - sentimental and comic images that were quite common throughout the entire period. Pictures where the person being portrayed communicates with himself or pictures with spirits are considered popular throughout all these decades. Sugary pictures (first cards, and later - photo postcards) of beauties, kids, pussies, etc. came into fashion in the 1890s. There is nothing of the kind in the Levitsky family archive.

Let me just say a few words about amateur portraits in the family archive. Quantitatively, this group of photographs is not so large in comparison with the studio portrait: only 121 objects (106 images) with a very wide chronological coverage - from the 1890s to the 1960s. But based on this group of shots, you can also draw some conclusions about amateur portrait photography.

Amateur portraits appear in the Levitsky family archive in the 1890s-1900s, and their number is small. The number of such photographs increased sharply already in the 1900s-1910s. and reaches its peak in the 1920s-1930s. In the post-war period, the number of amateur portraits drops sharply, which is a special case of a trend characteristic of the family photographic archive in question. In most cases, these are individual portraits. For the most part, they depict members of the family of V.A. Levitsky. 13 images of this group are attributed to D.A. Skvortsov. Among them are group and individual portraits of E.V. Levitskaya.

Using the example of amateur portraits from the Levitsky family archive, one can speak of three main ways in which amateur photography developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Firstly, it is an imitation of professional photography (in particular, mass studio photography). Secondly, an attempt to stop the moment, to capture a piece of life "as it is." Thirdly, the creation of an image, in which case photography becomes a means of expressing a person’s worldview, and the techniques and standards of both amateur and professional photography become a field for experiment or one of many tools; such images may be associated with a general artistic style era, but do not serve as examples of typical images (on the example of photographs by D.A. Skvortsov). I think it is not an exaggeration to state that all three paths exist in amateur photography at the present time. It should also be emphasized that amateur photography creates its own image standards that are in circulation in a certain era. Using the portraits from the Levitsky family archive as an example, we can talk about such photographs in relation to the post-war period (1950-1960s).

So, photographic portraits of the Levitsky family archive make up the majority (528 museum items out of 706) of the items in the family archive. Chronologically, they cover a whole century (1850-1950s). First of all, we are talking about professional photography, or rather, about a mass studio photo portrait (mainly individual). The family archive thus contains a representative set of mass studio photographic portraits of the 1880s-1910s, i.e. period when such a portrait was at the peak of its prevalence. This complex is representative not only by the number of photographs, but by the variety of shooting locations, by the number of photographic studios whose photographs have been deposited in the family archive. In this context, it is possible to analyze those features of the culture of photographic studios in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which can be identified on the example of photographs from the Levitsky family archive. At the same time, it is very important to compare the portraits of the family archive with other collections of mass studio photography and its characteristics in written sources and specialized literature, since it also allows you to analyze what and why is not in the family archive. In this case, the lack of additional processing photographs (enamelling, coloring), photographic "attractions" and samples of photographic "kitsch". In other words, a simple comparison of the phenomena of mass photography of the 19th - early 20th centuries. with the composition of the Levitsky family archive allows us to draw certain conclusions about the aesthetic views of family members, to characterize them as people who did not accept and did not love mass culture, but, like most of their contemporaries, used the products of mass photography in those cases when they did not consider it, using an epithet in the Chekhovian sense, "vulgar".

At the same time, the complex of portraits in the Levitsky family archive also makes it possible (which remains outside the scope of this work) to talk about the relationship between pre-revolutionary and Soviet professional portraiture, as well as about the relationship between professional and amateur portraiture. It is also possible to analyze the features of an amateur photo portrait of the 1900-1930s based on the family archive pictures.

Until the middle of the 19th century, textual and technical documentation were the only ways to secure information. But the middle of the XIX century brings to mankind a fundamentally new way of fixing information about the surrounding reality, which brought to life the new kind documents. A photograph appears (from the Greek foto - light and grafo - I write) - a visual document created by a photographic method.

The first to learn how to fix the image obtained on the screen of a camera obscura was the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who in 1826 took the first picture from the window of his room.

With the advent of the twentieth century new specific forms of photography has significantly expanded the range of its social functions. There is such a thing as photodocumentation.

Photo document is a photographic document. The appearance of photographic documents dates back to the first half of the 19th century and is associated with the invention of photography.

Photographic documents are distinguished by an essential feature - this type of document occurs at the time of events and at the scene of events. This feature gives photographic documents great value. Photographic documents are clear and accurate, thanks to which they are widely used in many areas of human activity: in science, art, technology, etc. For instance: x-rays in medicine, photography in judicial practice, photo - and microphotocopying to obtain copies of documents, etc.

A photograph is obtained on photosensitive materials, in which, under the action of light rays reflected from objects and focused by a lens, first a hidden, and after appropriate chemical processing, a visible black-and-white or color image of objects (picture, card) is formed. Photographic recording is carried out using a camera (still camera).

Depending on the functional purpose, photographs of general and special purposes are distinguished. The category of general-purpose photographs includes documentary, artistic, amateur. Special purpose photographs include scientific and technical, aerial, microphotography, x-ray, infrared, reproduced and other photographs.

Depending on the light-sensitive material, photographs are of two types: halogen silver and silver-free. In silver halide photographs, the photosensitive element is silver halide. The silver-free non-silver light-sensitive compounds. Silver halide photographs have become more widespread.

In terms of color, images of photographs are black and white and color. Until the 1930s, photography was mostly black and white, in which the image formed a metallic silver. high degree fragmentation. In recent decades, it has become widespread color photography, in which the image is formed by three dyes. Such a photograph more fully conveys all the variety of objects around us with their inherent colors and color shades, which is of great importance both in artistic and technical photography.

According to the type of substrate and the material basis of the carrier, photographs are distinguished on a flexible polymer (photo - and film), rigid (glass plates, ceramics, wood, metal, plastic) and paper (photographic paper). Photos can be sheet (card) and roll (on coils, cores, reels) of various lengths and widths. The main material carriers of photography are film and paper.

By film size general purpose photographs are issued flat format, reel non-perforated and reel perforated. Flat format films have the same format as records and are used in plate cameras. Reel non-perforated films are produced in the form of a tape 61.5 mm wide and 81.5 cm long. They are wound on wooden reels together with a light-protective tape - a leader. Perforated film is available in 35 mm width and 65 cm length, including loading and loading ends. It produces 36 shots with a frame size of 24x36 mm. It is wound on a reel and placed in an opaque cassette.

The light-sensitive layer of photographic paper is fine-grained, which makes it possible to obtain a high optical density after development with a small amount of metallic silver formed. Photo paper has a high resolution, in a short development time (1-2 minutes) it produces an image of high contrast. Photo paper differs in light sensitivity, contrast ratio, density, color, surface, etc. By application, it is divided into general purpose photo paper, which is used in artistic and technical photography, and technical photo paper, which is used only in technical photography.

Photo documents are organized into a photo library - a systematic collection of photographs, negatives or positives (transparencies) for the purpose of storing them and issuing them to the user.

Photographs and transparencies (Diapositive (Greek dia - through + lat. positivus positive) (slide) - a positive photographic or drawn image on a transparent material (film or glass) intended for projection onto a screen) belong to photographic documents - one of the main types of film and photo documents . A photographic document contains one or more photographic images. It is the result of documenting the phenomena of objective reality in the form of images using photochemical recording.

Depending on the genre and purpose, there are: artistic, chronicle - documentary, popular science, scientific photographic documents, as well as copies of ordinary documents obtained by photography and filming.

Depending on the direct or reverse tonality, photographic documents are divided into negatives and positives (transparency). Negative images are photographic images with a reverse transfer of the tonality of the subject being shot, i.e. those in which light tones actually look dark and dark tones look light. Positive shots that capture the brightness or color of the subject directly.

According to the material of the information carrier, photographic documents are distinguished on glass or film, and positives are distinguished on paper, film or glass (transparencies). The size and other indicators of photographic plates, photographic films and photographic paper are standardized.

The resistance of photographic films to external influences is determined by the composition of the emulsion layer. The most reliable films with a silver-containing emulsion: under ideal conditions, they can be stored for up to a thousand years, black-and-white films with other emulsions last from 10 to 140 years, color - from 5 to 30 years. The most common are silver halide light-sensitive information carriers, the main advantages of which are storage capacity, spectral versatility, high informative capacity, geometric accuracy and documentary image, simple and reliable hardware support.

An essential feature of a photographic document is that this type of document occurs at the time of events and at the scene of events. This feature gives photographic documents great value. Photographic documents are clear and accurate, thanks to which they are widely used in many areas of human activity: in science, art, technology, etc. For example: x-rays, photographs in judicial practice, photo and microphotocopying to obtain copies of documents, etc.

The use of micrographic technology has expanded the scope of the use of photographic documents. The result was microform documents. These are photographic documents on film or other media, which, for production and use, require an appropriate increase using micrographic technology. These documents include:

microcard - a document in the form of a microform on an opaque format material, obtained by copying onto photographic paper or micro-offset printing.

microfilm - a microform on a roll photosensitive film with a sequential arrangement of frames in one or two rows.

microfiche - a microform on a transparent format film with a sequential arrangement of frames in several rows.

ultramicrofiche - a microfiche containing copies of images of objects with a reduction of more than 90 times. For example, a 75x125 ultramicrofiche has a capacity of 936 booksize pages.

Recently, the digital photographic process has begun to be used in photographic documentation. It is devoid of many of the shortcomings of ordinary photography. One of the advantages digital photography is that the resulting image can be corrected - change color, contrast, retouch, etc. In addition, a digital camera can be connected to a computer and its peripheral devices, and the resulting images can be transferred via the Internet.

Further trends in the preservation and use of the image developed along several lines. This is, firstly, the use of photography as a memorable historical document, and secondly, its inclusion in the arsenal of scientific tools and evidence. But light painting began to develop most intensively in the field of everyday and historical portraiture, and also, in view of the seeming progressiveness in comparison with painting, as an alternative to works of fine art. These directions of photography are especially important to distinguish in initial period her history, when it was difficult to draw a clear line between some of them. For example, landscape photography of geographers, ethnographers, travel reporters often performed not only their natural science functions, but also had an aesthetic character, and over time became a historical document. The same can be said about individual and group photo portraits, taken for private, domestic purposes, but eventually becoming scientific and documentary evidence of the era.

Photography originated in the 1920s and 1930s. XIX century, when the first steps in this area were made by N. Niepce and L. Daguerre in France and F. Talbot in England. Niepce's invention, improved by Daguerre, received official recognition in 1839. Daguerre's name is immortalized in the original name of the photograph - daguerreotype.

From the daguerreotype to modern digital photography, a long way has been covered. On this path, all aspects of photography underwent profound changes: image carriers, equipment, filming techniques and further work on images. Improved professional photography and amateur photography developed. Photography, its technical equipment and techniques (for example, photography in infrared rays) are increasingly widely and sometimes unexpectedly used.

Especially with the advent of digital photography, the technology of taking pictures has changed a lot. Previously, when photographing, the negative of the image was first obtained, which turned into a positive as a result of appropriate processing. It is precisely the negatives that are intended for storage in archives, as they are less prone to destruction. The picture taken digital camera, is available for immediate viewing and is already quite ready. In digital form, it is entered into the computer memory and stored in it. The image can be displayed on the monitor and printed in any quantity on the printer.

Photographic documents refer to pictorial or visual sources, which in Lately are attracting more and more attention of historians (even the concept of “visual turn” in historiography has appeared abroad). People used the language of images long before the emergence of writing, and the oldest of the pictorial sources are paintings. Painting and photography (in literal translation - “light painting”) were constantly compared, the methodology developed by art historians for analyzing pictorial images is largely applicable to photographic images, especially with regard to form.

In the historical movement, photography captures the momentary, the unique, allows you to "stop the moment" - and not only when it is beautiful. The photographs capture the appearance of people, the expression on their faces, their emotional reaction to what is happening at the moment. They provide valuable material for studying the history of the landscape (natural and urban), they allow you to see how some no longer existing or rebuilt buildings looked like, in what environment were for some reason demolished or transferred monuments, etc.

The information possibilities of photography as a chronicle of current political events were already appreciated in the 60s and 70s. XIX century, when the first large photo reports appeared (a series of photographs by Matthew Brady about the American Civil War, photographs from the scene of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune). Some of the photographs (for example, the scene of the shooting of hostages at the Commune) were not authentic, but reproduced a later reconstruction of what happened. In the twentieth century photographic materials began to be widely used in newspapers in the USA, England, France and other countries. The close connection of photography with newspaper business and the activities of the media in general should be taken into account as an essential element in the historical and source analysis of photographic documents.

For scientific use, photographic documents are available in archival repositories. In Russia, this is primarily RGAKFD (Russian state archive film and photo documents) in the city of Krasnogorsk near Moscow. It stores over 1 million photo negatives and photographs. Digital technologies are used here mainly for intermediate operations in the process of storing documents (accounting, correction of defects that cannot be eliminated during chemical-physical restoration). For storage, preference over other media is still given to silver-containing films, the durability of which has been verified by experience. Since 1998, the Central Moscow Archive Museum of Personal Collections (TSMAMLS) has been operating, storing archives of individual families, including many photographs. An extensive collection of captured photographs, thematically related to the two world wars, is available in the RGVA (Russian State Military Archive).

The US Library of Congress contains over 5,000 photographs taken by the outstanding documentary photographer Lewis Hine (1874 - 1940), who himself preferred to call himself social photographer. At the beginning of the twentieth century. he actively participated in the movement for progressive reforms in the United States, drawing public attention, primarily to the problem of child labor. He took his photographs for the National Committee on Child Labor, arranged their exhibitions, included them in pamphlets, leaflets, etc. Later, Hine worked for the American Red Cross, documented the working conditions of Pittsburgh steelworkers, filmed the construction of the giant Empire States Building in New York, recorded the consequences of the Great Depression of the 30s, always remaining true to social themes.

In the EU, photographic collections are regarded as important component cultural heritage. Within the framework of the project "Ensuring the preservation and accessibility of photographic images in European countries" in 2000, a report of the special European Commission "Preservation and digitization of photographic collections in Europe" was published, for the preparation of which questionnaires were sent to 300 different institutions (about 140 of them answered). The authors of the report especially emphasize the need to preserve valuable and fragile original images, draw attention to the compilation of descriptions of documents for digitization.

But historians (at least in our country) still rarely use photographic documents as a source in their studies, and if they use them, then almost exclusively in the form of separate illustrations to the text. Photographs of documentary value are best known in reproductions illustrating books or published in newspapers, and the explanations accompanying them are usually not very informative in terms of sources and often contain factual errors.

Sometimes individual photographs are published together with other documents in publications of a memorial nature that do not contain actual source comments. The same applies to photo albums specially published in memory of any events.

It is rare to find something like a kind of "photo diary" left by one of the participants in the First World War - a lieutenant in the medical service of the Italian army.

A historian who has a photograph in front of him needs to know or establish by whom, when, under what conditions, for what purposes it was made. An amateur shot will be different from a professional photographer's shot, it has more spontaneity, naturalness, especially if the people depicted in the picture did not know that they were being photographed. Another thing is a professionally made standard photo for an official document or a group shot (the composition is also standard, the faces are somewhat tense). In a portrait made in a photo studio, the background is not the objects surrounding the client in real everyday life, but some scenery. His posture responds to the notions of “body language” characteristic of a particular era or social environment, which the photographer was consciously or unconsciously guided by. Among professional photographers there are well-known masters of artistic photography, whose works should be analyzed taking into account the creative manner of the author, and, if possible, the circumstances of his life and work. The time of photography is not always fixed, and sometimes it is indicated approximately, so dating the pictures requires considerable effort.

If the studied photographic materials are stored in the archive (the original source is the product of the author's photography, which has not undergone any technical or compositional changes), then information about them on issues related to their origin can be found in the descriptions compiled by the archivists. A photograph as a source should be analyzed from the point of view of both form (characteristic of the visual object, its location, background objects and other details of the image), and content.

Visual Documents as Special Sources of the History of Everyday Life

Reconstructing pictures of the past, the historian usually relies on written documents, drawing, if necessary, also archeological material and pictorial evidence. Among traditional historians, such appeals to pictorial evidence are of an auxiliary nature, often simply illustrating what has been said. It is often felt that in fact one can completely do without them, they are only additionally visually analyzed and reproduced on the basis of classical historical documents. It is no exaggeration that most historians feel uncomfortable with visual materials as a primary source. They rarely approach their analysis as critically as they tend to when referring to written documents. They learned to analyze and interpret written sources, but those trained to interpret and parse photography, cinema and video are not so rich among them. The conscious and well-established habit of working with texts and not with images has given rise to some extent to some disdain and distrust of visual documents as a historical source. To some extent, the subjectivism and selfishness of the researcher also affected: often studying documents, he creates in his imagination his own picture of this or that fact, event, phenomenon. And a figurative document, as an authentic image of an era, often not only corrects, but also destroys the composition of the manifestation.

On the other hand, a photograph, a motion picture, a video film are completely self-sufficient historical sources that need the same source criticism and appropriate methodological tools as written documents. Visual documents are important not only for the fixed visual image that they have stored, but also for the information encoded in them. It can be open, closed, hidden, etc. A comprehensive study, extraction and use of information from such sources allows the researcher not only to supplement his judgments about history, but also to look at it in the literal sense of the word3. They reveal historical events and facts in the form of specific static or dynamic visual images.

The visual range of perception of information is as important as auditory, tactile, intellectual. Direct fixation of historical information at the moment of action is one of the main properties of the vast majority of varieties of pictorial sources. These documents (photos, movies, videos), firstly, figuratively reflect the specifics of time and place; secondly, they themselves are artifacts (casts, traces) of this era, therefore, its direct documents (despite the visual range or panorama proposed by them); thirdly, the information encoded in them requires semantic (sign) reading and understanding. Accordingly, they are often as informative as printed or written sources. Due to the "visuality" they should be preferred.