TY - JOUR

T1 - This obscure object of desire

T2 - Object, photography, museum and damaged churches

AU - Ananiev, V.

AU - Katsaridou, I.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Saint-Petersburg State University. All rights reserved. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - The paper focuses on a collection of photographs recently (2016) donated to the Museum of Byzantine Culture of Thessaloniki, Greece, by Georges Kiourtzian, a Byzantine scholar associated with the College de France in Paris. The 17 mounted silver-prints date from the October Revolution of 1917 and portray the destruction by bombardments of churches and other monuments in the Kremlin, Moscow. Once part of the archive of Thomas Whittemore, the American Byzantine scholar, the photographs were discarded by the Byzantine Library in Paris, only to be collected by Georges Kiourtzian and then to find their way to the collection of the Museum of Byzantine Culture. This paper sheds light on the complicated itinerary of those photographs: from their production as documentation, to their use as propaganda material, to the Byzantine Library and their eventual discarding, and finally to their new life as museum artefacts in the Museum of Byzantine Culture. The disputed narratives of the photographs are revealed, along with challenges and potentials that reorganization and integration in this recent museum presents for unravelling contested dynamics of the collection.

AB - The paper focuses on a collection of photographs recently (2016) donated to the Museum of Byzantine Culture of Thessaloniki, Greece, by Georges Kiourtzian, a Byzantine scholar associated with the College de France in Paris. The 17 mounted silver-prints date from the October Revolution of 1917 and portray the destruction by bombardments of churches and other monuments in the Kremlin, Moscow. Once part of the archive of Thomas Whittemore, the American Byzantine scholar, the photographs were discarded by the Byzantine Library in Paris, only to be collected by Georges Kiourtzian and then to find their way to the collection of the Museum of Byzantine Culture. This paper sheds light on the complicated itinerary of those photographs: from their production as documentation, to their use as propaganda material, to the Byzantine Library and their eventual discarding, and finally to their new life as museum artefacts in the Museum of Byzantine Culture. The disputed narratives of the photographs are revealed, along with challenges and potentials that reorganization and integration in this recent museum presents for unravelling contested dynamics of the collection.

KW - Biography of object

KW - Object

KW - Photography

KW - Rubbish theory

KW - Thing

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067500724&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.21638/spbu19.2018.201

DO - 10.21638/spbu19.2018.201

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85067500724

VL - 2018

SP - 5

EP - 24

JO - Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana

JF - Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana

SN - 1995-848X

IS - 2

ER -