Exploring the Soviet Ukrainian Cinematographer’s Private Photo Archive: Issues of Popularization and Representation

Abstract

The archive of famous Soviet Ukrainian cinematographer Leonid Burlaka is an example of photography illustrating various spheres of life in Ukraine from the 1960s to the 1990s and has not only historical but also artistic value. In March 2017, the missing part of Leonid Burlaka’s photo archive was discovered in Odessa (Ukraine). Accordingly, the first phase of research was devoted to the analysis of the history of archive discovery, its condition, contents, and the systematization of photographs constituting the archive. In the second stage of the research, another part of the archive was analyzed, which was not lost but preserved by Leonid Burlaka himself and totaled over 300 films. In the process of exploring, the archive raised numerous new issues. How will the further life and preservation of the archive look? What might be the experience of presentation of the archive, its involvement in artistic practices and its influence on collective perception in the post-Soviet period? Currently, the archive forms the basis of the interdisciplinary project Fragile Memory. Therefore, the article touches on several issues: the history of the archive, questions regarding its research, as well as the experience of its popularization, which has been conducted during the past five years within the framework of the Fragile Memory project.