Nadezhda A. KRYLOVA Independent Researcher
e-mail: nadinkru@gmail.com
ORCID: 0009-0003-3144-0850
Olga M. ANNANUROVAIndependent Researcher
e-mail: olga.annan@gmail.com
ORCID: 0009-0004-3956-0686
Krylova, N., Annanurova, O. (2025) Between Economy and Feelings: Matters of Amateur Photography in the 1990sAbstract: The article analyzes amateur photographs from the 1990s in several home archives. In the decade under review, the photography industry in Russia was drawn into the logic of the market. The centralized structure of the photo service system that had developed under the Soviet planned economy was replaced by private entrepreneurial activity organized according to the model of Western societies; new types of consumption and new technical processes on which they were based emerged: methods of developing and printing, a system of photo laboratories. Most photographic goods, including cameras, film and photo papers began to be supplied from abroad. In these processes, what was significant was not so much the moment of “simplification”, “accessibility”, “change in quality”, but the fact that photography practices were transitioning to and simultaneously forming a new system of meanings associated with the free market, and accordingly with consumption, speed, profit, overproduction. Along with technical and economic changes, the practices of maintaining family archives were also transformed. Among other things, this can be traced in the material of the first albums of the nineties. Such albums often included both new and old Soviet photographs, which allowed capturing a certain “transitional” period. New realities are also revealed in the materiality captured within the image itself – in new textures, fabrics, colors, and furnishings that appear in the frame. The effects of photographs from this time are also associated with technical capabilities and limitations that led to a reduction in the image, new conventionality, defects, and inaccuracies. Considering the 1990s as a change not only between the political but also the photographic eras, the authors raise the question of how the meanings of “Soviet” and “non-Soviet” are manifested in these different material characteristics of the image. Color is considered in the article as an important technical characteristic of the image, which allows us to talk about complex relationships between the past and the present and sets a distance in relation to the viewer. At the same time, the conventionality and variability of color as a physical quality of photography entail transformations of the effects of perception.
Key words: 1990s, family archive, compact cameras, minilab, color photography, amateur photography.
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For Citation: Krylova, N., Annanurova, O. (2025) Between Economy and Feelings: Matters of Amateur Photography in the 1990s. International Journal of Cultural Research, 1 (58). 35–47. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_1_69
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_1_69
