О КОЛЛЕКЦИЯХ ФОТОСНИМКОВ АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ВОЕННОСЛУЖАЩИХ ЭКСПЕДИЦИИ «ПОЛЯРНЫЙ МЕДВЕДЬ», СДЕЛАННЫХ НА СЕВЕРЕ РОССИИ В ПЕРИОД ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ВОЙНЫ 1918–1919 ГГ.

Abstract

Nowadays visual history and its significance characterized by a broad interdisciplinary approach cannot be overestimated. Since 1991 when the Austrian historian and researcher of images Gerhard Jagschitz (1940–2018) first used the term «visual history», photographs and, perhaps, film documents began to be perceived by the scientific world not only as illustrative material, but also as a storehouse of new, but somewhere forgotten information, for example, concerning the appearance of settlements and people living there, everyday life and imperatives of human behaviour, as well as events in certain historical periods. In this article the author presents the data concerning the American military that gathered collections of photographs from the Polar Bear Expedition of the period 1918–1919. During the First World War, this expedition was undertaken by the United States to the territory of the European part of the North of Russia in order to prevent the German Empire from encroaching on the resources of Russia, taking advantage of its weakness as a result of the political crisis. This military mission, carried out jointly with other allied states, in the history of Russia will be called a foreign military intervention, which, unfortunately, became a catalyst for a bloody civil confrontation. In the course of the study, not only the names of the founders were revealed, but also the modern holders of photo collections located in the United States, providing almost free access to all of them. Particular attention is paid to such an important component of attribution of photographic documents as the identification of the American photographers personalities involved in the creation of the visual image of the Civil War in the North of Russia.