Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Apr 2024)
Landscapes of Galicia as Viewed through the Camera: Visualization of Belligerent Spaces of the First World War
Abstract
This article analyses practices of capturing the experience of the First World War on the Eastern Front and the construction of militarized life worlds by combatants of the Russian Army and photojournalists. The author aims to determine the significance of the belligerent landscapes of Galicia in the formation of participants’ specific behavioural strategies and practices in the first industrial war. Methodologically, the author relies on the synthesis of approaches of spatial research and visual anthropology, conceptual provisions of landscape studies, and cultural geography. To analyse the photographic situation on the Eastern Front of the First World War, the peculiarities of the further existence of visual images in group and collective communication, identify techniques for constructing the image of the Galician environment in 1914–1915, the author refers to photographic sources of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents. A key thesis of the study is the assumption that through the practice of photographing militarized landscapes, mental maps of alien space were constructed, and the imaginary appropriation of the territory annexed by the law of war took place. As a result, the author concludes that the landscapes of Galicia in photographs are a phenomenological construct, and not a direct reflection of reality or objective evidence. The photographic situation itself acts as an interpretation because photographers follow the imperatives of their own (prewar) life experience, the ideas formed by the prevailing discourses, consider the technical limitations of the era and shocking experiences in the spaces of death. The author also reveals the therapeutic function of war visualization and the role of the camera as a protective barrier for the photographer. The analysis determines the dynamic relationship of strategies for capturing military experience with the course of hostilities, as well as the need to study photographic albums dedicated to the life of individual units of the Russian Army or representing a series of images in a particular locality of Galicia as a whole and consistent photographic travelogue. The modern interpretation of military photographs makes it possible to reveal a layer of environmental consequences of the First World War in Eastern Europe which is latent for the photographer.
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