Ivan Poliakov’s Collection as the First Experience of an Integrated Photo Research of Western Siberia

Abstract

The article examines an early collection of photos related to ethnographic studies of the Ostyaks (Khanty), which is kept at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. These photographic documents were created by the zoologist Ivan Polyakov in collaboration with the photographer Ignatii-Anton Liutik in 1876 during their trip along the Ob river valley. I consider the documents in the context of specificities of the early ethnographic photorecording, as well as in the context of social history, culture, and everyday life of the Ostyaks living along the banks of the Irtysh and Ob rivers and in the Ob Gulf area. The article draws on a variety of historical documents available at Russian archives and on Poliakov’s published report. I pay special attention to the museum history of the collection, its perception by contemporaries, storage and museumification. The description and thematic classification of groups of photographic documents helps us to uncover the possibilities and methods of field photo work of the 1870s, and cast a look on the Ostyak culture through the prism of the researcher’s and photographer’s backgrounds.