The Intern Blog

On one of the websites about Lviv, one of the larger and more historic cities in Ukraine (Vasyl Yavorskyj. http://misto.ridne.net/thread. Retrieved on March, 23) has posted an article about the official document, “Financing of Historical Objects.” According to this document some historical buildings receive annual funds to support maintenance and restoration. For restoration of the Chapel of the Boim family (the Boim family were Hungarian nobles in the 17th century) are to receive 0.008 thousands hryvnias (hryvnia is national Ukrainian currency. 5 hryvnias equals 1$). 0.008 thousands hryvnias is 88 hryvnias in other words. This is less than eighteen American dollars. Considering that building materials cost the same as they do in the U.S.—what does this say about government support for cultural heritage sites?

The Chapel of the Boim family is one of the most famous and visited examples of mannerist architecture in Central Europe. This is also a museum to some degree because the administration preserves original building of 17th century. The financial situation for this Chapel is also very typical for Ukrainian museums. Usually, the government is sponsors the up-keep of museums and theatres. While there is some new legislation addressing sponsorship of such organizations, it seems likely that much time may pass before implementation. Moreover, corruption in all levels of government and even among the museum’s administration will interfere with the implementation of the law.

Today people understand this situation but feel that they can do nothing about it. The reason for this is that the public does not have access to museum records of expenses and income. Here is a small example — look at the poorly made official website of Museum-Pharmacy in Lviv: www: http://apteka.iatp.org.ua. The creation of the website for this museum was financed by the American government. It has become obvious that the administration of the museum did not spend all of the money on this website. There is no publicly available information on the actual use of the funds granted for this project.

In Ukraine, as in all post-Soviet countries, the government does not tend to turn its attention to the museums’ problems, especially, financial ones. Probably, many Ukrainians would think that only our country faces such a situation. However, I am discovering that insufficient governmental financing for cultural institutions is worldwide. Even in such a highly economically developed country as United States of America, governmental financing of museums is a problematic issue.

Only few museums in the U.S. enjoy generous governmental support. World famous Smithsonian museums are institutions in this category. One reason for this is that they are under the direct supervision of the US Government and another may be their location – Washington, D.C. In this city millions of tourists visit and carry away a positive impression of the Smithsonian and of the country. Thus visitors returning to their home countries will make an ad for Smithsonian.

A different situation is in the periphery cities. Even if there is a world famous museum in the city, it does not receive major financial support from government. For example, George Eastman House, first museum of photography in the world, receives only 5% of its annual financial support from the government (http://www.eastmanhouse.org/inc/the_museums/2005). Visitors’ admissions (3%), contributions (73%), investments (11%), and other sources (8%) make the rest of the Museum’s income.

Also, it is important to mention that except the sponsors’ financial contributions, there are many people who serve as museum volunteers. Eastman House has many tour guides, but there is no paid position as tour-guide. This may not seem to be as important as financial contributions if we think only of the work of an individual volunteer, but the total labor contributed by volunteers saves big sums of money.

Thus, George Eastman House has to attract volunteers to make excursions possible. Also, the managers have to make a museum attractive in some way to different categories of visitors, even to those of them who are neither interested in photography, nor in an intellectual history of media. The Museum responds by offering attractions, which do not relate directly to the mission of the organization. For example, on Halloween George Eastman House, the world famous museum of photography, becomes a haunted house for children. In this way the museum benefits from increased admissions and greater visibility in its home town. Creating the correct balance between mission and promotion remains a challenge for museums all over the world, not only for George Eastman House. In this way, museums can continue over time to exhibit and care for the treasures of humanity. From the perspective of the true mission of the museum, this management of contradictions may always look like a compromise.

Purpose of photography… this is a hard question to answer. It is the same type of question as the one about the meaning of art. People ask art students why they study art — if they can’t earn a living unless they are either lucky or a genius. The answer is really hard to find. I’m sure there are as many answers as there are people living in the world today. There is a desire to share with others a sunny day, red fish in the pond, watching a dancing couple, a smiling boy, or a stranger’s tears.

In my opinion, one of the most important purposes of photography is opening yourself, your world, to others. You can show friends and family what modern society means to you. You can show who you are and what your world is to those who will stay and rule in this world tomorrow. Past photographers depicted their worlds and now we can understand their time through the pictures. A girl should have dressed in her best dress, made the curls for hours — just to be photographed. So, on the picture we could see not only fashion standards of those times but also the economic level of the subject and the social norms of that society. Today, much professional photography follows this path. Even the professional photographer working on assignment gathers cultural evidence in every exposure. The images made for lip-gloss, suntan lotion, open dresses, and all of those photographs that employ the tools of Adobe Photoshop, may still be read as evidence of our larger reality.

Will it be hard for future interpreters to explain today’s amateur pictures? How do we interpret pictures in which people do not know what they do? There are gestures that have lost their meaning and yet still employed by subjects who are having their picture taken. Is the smile in this category? What will children know of their incessantly smiling parents?

Japanese amateur photography makes a good example with millions of small high-tech pocket cameras. A great many subjects of Japanese snap shots, especially teenagers, are making the V-sign while smiling. Worldwide, the smile is quite the usual thing. Though, we see V-sign not in every country. But this is not the reason that makes it hard to interpret. It seems that most of these Japanese teens do not attach any particular meaning to the V-sign. A friend of mine says that it is just for fun. In a bit of online research, she discovered that there are two interpretations. First, the sign is made because the signer has seen it made, by others, for the camera. And second, as you may suspect, there are those who see the V as a sign of peace — tracing its use to student protesters of the Vietnam war, inverting its reference to victory in World War II or during the Hundred Years’ War as an insult to French soldiers. Now, however, these historical explanations appear only on websites that analyze the phenomenon. In real life nobody thinks about what he/she does when a picture is taken of him/her. In practice, the gesture has become automatic. For these Japanese teens, it is not necessary to know the history of the gesture in order to use it. Some may know it means peace or victory but not when and why it was used, but most seem not to care. Should we care?

So, the question still remains unanswered: how will our children interpret pictures of us? Always smiling and happy society? Fake society? Society without meaning in its symbols (like V-sign)? Society with forgotten history? Society that does not care…!?

Anastasiya Prymovych

Today we may remember the purposes of Soviet photography, but how will future generation understand archives of this material. Will the image – by itself – perpetuate the myth that was its original purpose? Eastman House intern, Anastasiya Prymovych, considers the representation of Soviet images in our library.

Fruitful fields, high-powered machines and factories, buildings, or some institutions… Everything is progressive. No one is failing to meet expectations. The faces are not faces of individuals. Instead we see factory workers, field workers, teachers, and doctors. They are happy, there are no sad faces. Do these pictures tell truth to us? There were no sad faces? In the future, will these images remain so clearly associated with their historical context?

The government wanted everybody to believe that economic equality is the best thing you can wish. You should be satisfied with your work in the factory. But at the same time your work will serve your state, and this means that you have to try as hard as you can to improve your state. Pictures became one means for implementing communism. Photographs promoted, not a person as a unique individual, but his or her function. That is why you see kolkhozniks (farmers), builders, and engineers in so many Soviet era photographs. Occasionally you may see mothers and fathers (perhaps illustrating the role of parenthood) but they are not particular women or men.

Faces or eyes that reveal unhappiness or the human form that displays the body of an individual must avoid the photographer’s lens. Any naked body was forbidden to be shown in public. This was one of the three important rules of Soviet Photography. As for the other two: It was also forbidden to s make a photograph (of the anything) that might disrupt Soviet power or the Soviet way of life. There were to be no photographs taken from a position higher than the second floor of a building in the vicinity of railways, transport stations, and of course, military objects, enterprises, or organizations—without special permission. And finally, photographs should never reveal anything that the state wishes to hide. Nobody, especially foreigners, can know about the “secrets.” This rule, may have more to do with the look of Soviet photography that any other. I guess that this rule was understood to mean “no photographs of malfunction” —be it of the factories or in the faces of the people.

These simple facts were never so outstanding for me, as when I started to intern in this American museum of photography, George Eastman House. I was born in the Soviet Union and grew accustomed to seeing these pictures in old Soviet books. Modern photographers do show to people with unhappy faces and desperate lives. Only here, however, I found books of some of the authors who were active during the Soviet time but who never published their works within the Soviet state. Even in our modern states (like my Ukraine), which were the part of the Soviet Union, museums do not often have exhibitions, which are not passed by the censor. Limited editions of those who show the naked body of Soviet man or woman are, probably, less accessible in Russia than in America or Europe. Among them there are, for example, just 3000 copies of Boris Mikhailov’s “Salt Lake.” But the question is not even about the censorship that still exists or censorship that existed before, but about clarity of lenses and about how lenses interpreted an individual. Did they? Omitting people who lead the public life, and those who served as models for roles and functions, how many individuals in Soviet society were ever honestly captured by the camera?

Anastasiya Prymovych