FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

ANTROPOLOGICHESKIJ FORUM
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Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 29

 

THE ETHNOGRAPHER(S) WITH A CINE-CAMERA IN THEIR HANDS: THE PROKOFIEVS AND THE VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF SAMOYEDS

Dmitry V. Arzyutov

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
University of Aberdeen, School of Social Sciences
Edward Wright Building, Aberdeen, AB24 3QY, Scotland, UK
darzyutov()gmail.com

Abstract: This article describes Georgiy and Ekaterina Prokofiev’s expedition to the Bol’shezemel’skie Nenets and their experience of filming documentary chronicles in the late 1920s — the early 1930s. The Prokofievs’ records are a unique piece of the visual anthropology of the Samoyedic peoples. Referring to the available archival documents (field diaries, letters, museum documentations) and published memoirs of the colleagues of the Prokofievs, it is assumed that the chronicles were filmed at the expense of the cooperation agreement signed by Franz Boas and Vladimir Bogoras in New York in 1928. This article offers a reconstruction of Prokofiev’s fieldwork experience and his accounts on the early history of collectivization. In this regard, the cinematic chronicles and a collection of photos taken in the field are treated as a visual conceptualisation. The available studies of the visual anthropology of the USSR suggest that the documentary chronicles by the Prokofievs filmed in 1929–1930 are the first cinematic records produced by ethnographers in the Soviet Arctic.

Keywords: Soviet ethnography, documentary, Arctic, Nenets, Boas, Prokofievs, collectivization.

To cite: Arzyutov D., 'Etnograf s kinokameroy v rukakh: Prokofevy i nachalo vizualnoy antropologii samodiytsev' [The Ethnographer(s) with a Cine-Camera in Their Hands: The Prokofievs and the Beginning of the Visual Anthropology of Samoyeds], Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 29, pp. 187–219.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/029/arzyutov.pdf