Beyond memory: Soviet nonconformist photography and photo-related works of art

Abstract

"Photography possesses a powerful ability to bear witness, aid remembrance, shape, and even alter recollection. In Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related works of Art, the general editor, Diane Neumaier, and twenty-two contributors offer a rigorous examination of the medium's role in late Soviet nonconformist art. Focusing on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, they explore artists' unusually inventive and resourceful uses of photography within a highly developed Soviet dissident culture."--Jacket.

Contents

Painting versus photography : a battle of mediums in twentieth-century Russian culture / Konstantin Akinsha -- Soviet policy on photography / Elena Barkhatova -- The force of the medium : the Soviet amateur photography movement / Valery Stigneev -- Closer to the body / Alexander Borovsky -- Freeze frame : photography and performance in Moscow conceptual art / Ekaterina Bobrinskaya -- The copy is the crime : unofficial art and the appropriation of official photography / Ekaterina Degot -- Russian photography in the textual context / Boris Groys -- Stretching the limits : on photo-related works of art in the Norton and Nancy Dodge collection / Alla Rosenfeld -- Naked in the grass : absurdity and play in the ideological field / Lev Manovich and Nick Muellner -- Subversive photography : U.S. theory meets Soviet practice / Ernest Larsen -- The shock of the posthumous : Vladimir Syomin's Caucasus project / Jason Francisco -- The special case of Baltic experimental photography. Uses of photography in Estonian visual art / Sirje Helme ; On the verge of snapping : Latvian nonconformist artists and photography / Mark Allen Svede ; Reclaiming the salt of the Earth : Lithuanian photography reconsidered / Raminta Jurenaite -- Feeling around / Boris Mikhailov with Alla Efimova -- Unusual perspectives/fantastic possibilities / Igor Makarevich with Gerald Pirog -- Hinting at reality / Aleksandr Slyusarev with Mikhail Sidlin.