Visual Sources Research Articles

FluxCT: A Web Tool for Identifying Contaminating Flux in Kepler and TESS Target Pixel Files

We announce FluxCT, a web tool for identifying contaminating flux in Kepler and TESS target pixel files due to secondary visual sources. We demonstrate the usage of this tool and discuss the benefits of this tool over a simple Gaia radius search. FluxCT focuses on clarity and simplicity, where the only input needed from the user is a KIC or TIC ID. By more appropriately accounting for the actual shape of the photometric pixel apertures, FluxCT can produce much more accurate estimates of contaminating flux than simple radial cone searches.

‘Who likes kidneys?’ ‘Fried in the pan?’

Taking a video of the Serbian paramilitary Scorpions unit recording killing as a starting point and drawing upon my own research on WWII and the German genocide, the purpose of this essay is to probe the methodological and ethical challenges of visual sources (videos, photographs) that mediate acts and experiences of violence. Today’s viewers might first notice the striking violence and horror of the Scorpions unit video, reacting in many cases with shock, alienation, or empathy. Once we engage with the gaze of the videographer, it becomes clear that the recorded scenes follow a completely different logic. Despite its indisputably violent content, the video manages to convey the impression of male bonding, fun, and bravado in a fiercely violent and racialised armed conflict, in which ethnic, religious, and national categories were murderously conflated. The Scorpions unit, like many other professional killers, was embedded in a climate of impunity and an economy of violence with significant gendered dynamics at stake that we need to question. The act of recording is a highly performative and self-referential endeavour that calls us for investigating not solely social practices but also postures and gesture as acts of visual mediation. A first section reflects on the social constellations of collective violence of perpetrators as ingroups. In the second part, the focus shifts from the violent action itself to the semantics of violent gestures, before turning in the third section to reflect upon (audio)visual recordings of violence. Visual and audio-visual sources as media hence invite us to think about the complex relationship between artefact and actors. Methodological and heuristic questions about how we deal with images of violence, particularly those captured by perpetrators, constitute, as this essay argues, one of the major challenges of studying the twentieth-century photographic age and even more so, our current digital era.

The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Правовая иконография и иконографический (иконологический) метод в правовых исследованиях

The methodology of Russian legal science has a poor understanding of such an interdisciplinary science as legal iconography and the iconographic (iconological) methods. This article focuses on the legal history studies and legal iconography. The current source-centric approach in the socio-humanitarian sciences requires a broader understanding of research subject and methodology. The history of legal iconography is an independent scientific direction, its main tasks being systematization and description. The author defines legal iconography as an interdisciplinary direction of scientific research that describes and interprets visual sources of legal content. The essence of iconographic method is the description of the general theme, the definition and attribution of details, and the interpretation of images, allegories, and plots. This definition is illustrated by numerous examples. The author also defined prospective areas of iconographic research in law. Iconological research includes three stages. The pre-iconographic stage is purely empirical and descriptive. The iconographic stage is theoretical and analytical; it reveals the direct content and meaning of the image. The author believes that the iconographic (iconological) method of scientific research in law and the prospects of legal iconography in Russian legal studies require further research and scientific discussion.

Interior as a Scene in the Depictions of French Illustrators of Racine’s Works in the 18th Century: A Comparative Aspect

French literary illustration of the 18th century is studied from the point of view of depicting an interior as a locale. The problem of the influence of literary and visual sources on the formation of the image of an interior is studied through several series of illustrations for Racine’s Works in 18th century editions. The main sources of comparative research are the illustrations for J. Racine’s Berenice, engraved from drawings by French artists L. Cheron (1723), L.-F. Dubourg (1743), J. de Sève (1760), H.-F. Gravelot (1768), J.-J.-F. Lebarbier (1796). Reading Racine’s Berenice in French and Russian, reading critical works about “Racine’s space” helps to understand the image of locale in the playwright’s version. The events of Racine’s Berenice take place in the confined space of an ancient Roman palace. The author modernizes the locale, using the concepts of the French noble interior of his time — “cabinet”, “apartments”. The description of the scene has a minimum of detail, is contradictory and insufficient for literal depictions. The artists, following the example of the playwright, interpreted the scene in the spirit of modernity, but changed and supplemented the main and secondary details. As a rule, they depicted the reception area of the ceremonial apartments and accurately conveyed the styles of interior decoration (Grand style, Transition style, Neoclassicism, Directory style). The artists explained the episode and the play as a whole by means of compositional tools that had a wide semantic range. Comparison the illustrations among themselves and comparison the book engravings with architectural engravings shows the continuity of the artistic tradition and adherence to the academic rules of working with depiction. The artists repeated the compositions of similar illustrations and quoted the interior design projects of the 17th–18th centuries. The image of a locale in the illustration was directly dependent on visual sources, and not on the text. The method of depicting an interior in the illustrations was based on selective and arbitrary reflection of the text, actualizing the appearance of a locale, using the semantics of details and partial copying of samples.

How is the Rani of Jhansi Memorised in the History of the Nineteenth-Century India? Selection of Historical Accounts

The article examines the visual sources and historical first-hand accounts depicting Rani Lakshmi Bai, the queen of the princely state of Jhansi, who became a symbol of Indian resistance against British rule during the 1857–1858 struggle for freedom. The study covers the colonial period of Indian history. The paper’s main argument is that there are differences in the representation of Rani by British and Indian authors. Within their narratives, Indian writers favourably present the queen, while the British tend to show her less flattering portrayal. Concentrating on visual sources, the study analyses Rani’s figure by looking at two stages of her life: the youth and the time of the revolt. The article also focuses on the queen’s image in the contemporary political discourse. The paper is based on a qualitative approach emphasising historical perspective. Therefore, it analyses the printed materials, including archival primary sources. Based on a postcolonial literature review, the use of British and Indian sources is comparative.

СЮЖЕТ "СЕМЬ ТАИНСТВ" В РУССКОМ ИСКУССТВЕ XVII В. И ЕГО КНИЖНЫЙ ИСТОЧНИК

The article deals with a rather rare for Russian art of the 17th century story of the Seven Sacraments. Its source was the engravings of the printing house of the Kyev Pechersk Lavra, which were among the book “projects” of the head of the Kyiv Metropolis of the Constantinople Orthodox Church, Petro Mohyla (1632–1647). A few images of that motif have long been known to researchers, but the origin of its variations has not been revealed. The issue is studied on the examples of two icons of the last quarter of the 17th century “Crucifixion with the Seven Sacraments”. Their distinguishing feature is the depicting the optional for all Christians sacrament of marriage in the foreground. The author of the article suggests that the creation of such an iconography was associated with the marriage of Tsar Feodor Alekseyevich. The development of baroque aesthetics also prompted artists to combine elements of different iconographic schemes in one composition and create a complicated version of the Life-Giving Tree with scenes of the seven Sacraments and the Passion of Jesus cycle. They used several literary and visual sources. The surviving samples of such a composition demonstrate the variability of its iconography and the creative nature of the work of Russian icon painters in the 17th century, who could create completely independent works on the same subject with pronounced individual characteristics.

ПОВСЯКДЕННЯ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧЧЯ Рецензія на книгу: Демчук Стефанія. Доба постів та карнавалів. Як жили, пили і кохалися у Середньовіччі. Київ: Віхола, 2023. 336 с.

The review analyses the work of a historian and media studies scholar Stefaniia Demchuk on the everyday life of the Middle Ages. The scholar focuses her research on the medieval man, with all his fears, desires, joys, and sorrows. The work consists of 7 chapters, which are logically structured from the birth of a person to their death, with life between these periods filled with work, holidays, love, and education. The value of the work lies in the fact that the researcher draws attention to the least represented, especially in Ukrainian historiography, class - the peasantry. The analysis of the work revealed that the researcher used interdisciplinary methods, anthropological and hermeneutical approaches. Geographically, the work covers the territory of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, which Stefania Demchuk proposes to consider within the time frame from the 5th till the 16th century. While the researcher relies on a significant number of archaeological, written and visual sources, works by well-known European medievalists, the material is aimed at readers of any level. The study is a popular science story about the Middle Ages, with additional recommendations for readers, illustrations, and quotes from works of art and treatises. As part of her work, Stefania Demchuk not only presents the history of everyday life in an accessible way, but also debunks the most common and popular myths and stereotypes about the Middle Ages: backward medicine and lack of hygiene, the low, disenfranchised position of women, church-controlled celebrations, poverty, hunger, no proper childhood experiences, etc. Stefania Demchuk's work "The Age of Fasting and Carnivals. How They Lived, Drank and Loved in the Middle Ages" promotes the popularisation of history and media studies, and is aimed at combating historical myths and fakes. This work will be of interest and use to both the scientific community and anyone interested in the Middle Ages.

ВІЗУАЛЬНА СПАДЩИНА ВАДИМА ЩЕРБАКІВСЬКОГО — ПЕРШОДЖЕРЕЛО ВИВЧЕННЯ ГЕНЕЗИ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО САКРАЛЬНОГО БУДІВНИЦТВА, НАРОДНОГО МИСТЕЦТВА ТА ЕТНОГРАФІЇ (ЗА АРХІВНИМИ МАТЕРІАЛАМИ ІН НАН УКРАЇНИ)

Photographs and negatives of V. Scherbakivskyi are an important source for studying the genesis of Ukrainian sacred construction, architecture, folk art, and ethnography. They are the basis for the restoration of the artistic tradition, remain relevant, and go far beyond the boundaries of historiographical discourse. The goal is to publicize and analyze information about Vadym Shcherbakivskyi's negatives, which are stored in the funds of the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, to show his familiarity with photographic practice, to highlight their value for architecture, folk art, ethnology, and church history. The object of the study is the legacy of V. Scherbakivskyi's negatives, collected by the Museum of the National Academy of Sciences. The subject is the practice of using visual material by Vadym Shcherbakivskyi to study the genesis of Ukrainian sacred construction, folk art, ethnography and to restore the artistic tradition. Methods: comparative-historical analysis is used for the reconstruction, study and research of certain ethnographic territories of Ukraine; synchronous and diachronic — to characterize the content variability of its photo-fixation, its use for building the genesis of Ukrainian sacred architecture and its origin. The article highlights the cooperation of V. Shcherbakivskyi with the National Academy of Sciences, his scientific research in Galicia at the beginning of the 20th century. and in the Poltava region, it is shown how the collected visual sources allowed V. Shcherbakivskyi to assert the existence of an independent "Ukrainian church style", that the Ukrainian artistic tradition is a confirmation of national identity, it is highlighted how his photo-fixation of Ukrainian church architecture became an important factor in the breakdown of the Great Russian piece in appropriation other people's achievements. It is shown how visual sources serve as artifacts for the study of architecture, folk art, ethnology and Church history, the tasks set for the processing and digitization of photos and negatives of V. Shcherbakivsky and the publication of an album for the 150th anniversary of his birth.

СКОНСТРУИРОВАННЫЙ КУЛЬТ: ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ ПОЧИТАНИЯ ЖАННЫ Д’АРК ВО ФРАНЦИИ XIX В.

The article deals with the history of forming the local cult of Joan of Arc in her native village of Domremy (Lorraine). In modern historiography under the “local cult” usually mean the veneration of Joan of Arc in Orleans, whose inhabitants since the second half of the 15th century perceived the girl not only as a savior of their city from the English siege of 1428–1429, but also as a saint. However, the other most important place of veneration of the Virgin, her native village of Domremy in Lorraine, for long remained without much attention of historians. Based on the material of written and visual sources, the author analyzes the features of the veneration of the heroine of the Hundred Years’ War in Modern times and identifies two main periods of the formation of a specific “place of memory” in Domremy – the era of the Restoration of the monarchy in the early 19th century and the years following the Franco-Prussian War. The author comes to the conclusion that the main distinction of the local cult was its secular orientation. Unlike Orleans, where already in the 15th century the veneration of Joan of Arc was purely religious in nature, the “construction” of the cult in Domremy initially became the work of the state, starting with King Louis XVIII and ending with the local municipality. The difference was especially pronounced during the so–called dispute between the two Frances – republican and monarchical.

Documentary films of the 1920s-1930s about the dynamics of the socio-cultural space of the Kazakh ASSR

Documentary films about Kazakh ASSR have not yet been included in the systematic field of historical research of the early Soviet period. Meanwhile, this visual source is an important component of the analysis of Soviet ethnonational policy of the 1920s-1930s. Filmography at the initial stage of its formation captured the transition of Kazakh society from tradition to modernity, deep socio-economic and other transformations in the Kazakh ASSR. The silent and sound documentary chronicles, reports, more complex in composition and drama film documents stored in the funds of the Central State Archive of Film and Sound Recordings of the Republic of Kazakhstan are of undoubted value. Almost all the most significant transformations in the republic in the early Soviet period were captured by experienced directors and cameramen in such a way that they give a concrete and voluminous idea of the changes in the social structure of society, the formation of the national working class and ethno-political elite, the solution of the "women's issue", urbanization, economic specialization of the regions of the Kazakh ASSR, the introduction of new standards of professional activity and private practices, daily life and major political events. Of great interest are the films recorded by documentary filmmakers, dramaturgically and compositionally arranged in accordance with the main trends in the development of cinema, as well as the socio-cultural and ideological-political paradigm of the Soviet state. Along with the traditional archival and published written historical sources available to scientists, film documents serve to study and complex understanding of the essence, manifestations and results of nation-building in the 1920s and 1930s. The article considers examples of a number of documentaries of the greatest interest for understanding modernization shifts and ambivalent manifestations of the transformations of the era of industrialization, collectivization and cultural revolution in the Kazakh ASSR.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE 16th CENTURY CHURCH IN THE ST. NICHOLAS IN UGRESHA MONASTERY (works in 2004)

The article publishes materials from excavations of one of the stone churches lost in the 1930s–1940s in the monastery of St. Nicholas “in Ugresha” in the Moscow vicinity. In 2004, the remains of its basement masonry were cleared, which contained a large amount of spolia from an earlier church of the 15th – first half of the 16th century. A part of the monastery cemetery of the 14th–15th centuries was investigated, the site stratigraphy was established. The paper presents a complete plan and cross-sections of the structure, as well as all the limestone fragments found there. The article accompanies the research of A.L. Batalov, which focuses on the history of the church after written and visual sources, published in the same issue.

ЗАГАЛЬНИЙ ОГЛЯД НАЙБІЛЬШ РАННІХ АЦТЕКСЬКИХ КОДЕКСІВ

The importance of Mesoamerican codices as sources for studying the history and culture of the civilizations of this region is difficult to overestimate. More than 300 manuscripts, the origin of which is associated with the Mexica (Aztec) culture have survived to this day. Among other peoples of Mesoamerica, the conquerors from the Old World were the most interested exactly in the Aztecs. The Europeans studied indigenous language, culture and customs in order to know and understand their enemy. Traditional local books (codices) served as both a source of information and a means of influence. They were carefully studied, copied, translated and shipped to the Old World. The attitude of the colonial authorities towards such manuscripts was ambiguous. On the one hand, many codices were destroyed by the Catholic Inquisition as part of a campaign to eliminate traditional beliefs. On the other hand, the authorities actively sponsored the creation of new books, ordered them from local masters and reproduced them. Almost all surviving documents of this type were written after the conquest of the region, so only a few of the earliest manuscripts still embody the original artistic tradition. By studying them, we can trace how local customs are changing and gradually displacing under the influence of European culture. The article, based on the English- and Spanish-language scientific literature, as well as visual sources, contains basic information about the five earliest Aztec codices. Their alternative names and modern place of storage are specified, physical characteristics are given, the history of manuscripts, their content and artistic features are indicated. The work also highlights different views of modern researchers on the problem of dating those codices, the exact time of creation of which has not yet been finally established. Not a single Aztec manuscript that is unanimously recognized by scholars as pre-colonial has survived. The most ancient of them, according to the vast majority of researchers, were created either immediately before the Conquest, or in the first years after its start. On the basis of analyzed sources and literature, it was established that four of the five codices considered in this work to a greater or lesser degree contain obvious traces of European culture’s influence. The article also notes the importance of studying the Mesoamerican codices as sources on the history and culture of the region, with particular emphasis on the relevance of this problem in the Ukrainian-speaking scientific space.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS FROM ARCHIVE SOURCES IN THE RESEARCH OF COUNTRY ETHNOGRAPHY

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, visual sources also play a special role in creating an image of the country's life, daily lifestyle, and activities. Visual sources typical of this period were described by local people as wonderful paintings, miniatures, and were created by Russians and Europeans who came to the country later.

МОДЕРНОСТЬ, ТЕМПОРАЛЬНОСТЬ И СОВЕТСКАЯ МОДА В ЛЕНИНГРАДЕ В 1950–1960-Е ГОДЫ

The article examines the process of clothing design at the Soviet official fashion institution, the Leningrad Fashion House, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Based on the archival materials and visual sources, the research aims at exploring Soviet fashion as a manifestation of modernity. One of the key ideological and political agendas of the state leaders of that period was the aim to overcome backwardness. However, compared to Western fashion design, Soviet clothing always looked “frozen in time”. The article investigates the specifics of temporality of Soviet fashion. The analysis of unique sources exhibits that Soviet fashion had several temporal orders. The first temporal order was formed due to the different speeds of design and production. Class, social and cultural inequalities influenced the formation of various fashions in the Soviet Union, which could retard from each other. Soviet designers did not set themselves the goal of creating a completely alternative variant of modern fashion. Understanding of modernity was shaped by the transnational entanglements of ideas and practices, as Western fashion remained the major reference point for what it meant to be modern. The key theoretical result of the article is that, being in different temporalities, Soviet fashion indicated different dimensions of modernity.

EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA, FEMINILIDADES E UNIFORMES. O CASO DO DEPARTAMENTO DE CULTURA FÍSICA (1929-1946) DA UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE LA PLATA (ARGENTINA)

ABSTRACT: We investigate the construction of femininities from the use of uniforms for Physical Education classes. For this, we base ourselves on the case of the Department of Physical Culture, an institution that existed between 1929 and 1946, of the National University of La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina). We wonder about how and why the Physical Education uniforms contributed to gendering and sexualizing the bodies of female students. We build three periods from the mandatory establishment of female uniforms for Gymnastics classes: 1929-1934, 1935-1939, and 1940-1946. This use was due to the decisions made by the authorities of the Colegio Secundario de Señoritas, which also implied different ways of understanding and teaching the subject. From a qualitative methodological strategy, we propose the interpretation of a case, approaching it from the tools coming from the critical perspective of gender and visual history. We use written and visual sources, as well as semi-structured interviews with former students. We consider that the obligatory nature of uniforms, in relation to the construction of femininities, involves moral, aesthetic, sexual, material, erotic, and kinetic dimensions. In this sense, we conclude that what happened with the teaching of Physical Education in the Colegio Secundario de Señoritas, in terms of the transmission of femininities, accounts for a permanent tension in society between equality and inequality between women and men, without not be a linear path at all from inequality to equality or less inequality.

СЦЕНЫ НАСИЛИЯ НА РАСПИСНЫХ ИЗРАЗЦАХ XVIII-XIX ВВ.

The paper considers scenes of violence on Russian smooth painted tiles. Usually that genre scenes represent an armed warrior who kills his vanquished enemy. Related to that subject are solitary figures of mounted and foot soldiers, armed with swords, sabers, rapiers, bows and pistols. Weapons and horses became an attributes of heroic plot. The main visual source for scenes of violence on tiles was engravings from folk bibles. A variety of plots, from executions and suicide attempts to everyday scenes of a peaceful nature could be interpreted as a warrior’s victory in battle. Text clichés (mottos, that were borrowed from emblematic collections) were used as signatures on tiles, what created the narrative background: challenge to a duel or victory celebration. One can understand from the text of the Motto that the protagonist with whom the viewer of the tile could solidarize is the murderer, not the victim. Popular interest in the horror element and the popularity of the heroic plot lead to the appearance of curious ornaments: for example, the image of a warrior with a severed enemy’s head

Badiucao: Caricature as a Form of Protest against Chinese Policy

The object of the research is the political caricatures of the famous Chinese artist Badiucao (巴丢草). The authors used content analysis of a wide range of visual sources, primarily the artist's personal website, the first publications of caricatures on the Twitter, as well as comparative analysis to reveal the artistic features of the works. The main attention was paid to the biography of the artist as it defines his style and the way he depicts political events or politicians. The caricatures were analyzed in accordance to their main characteristics, formal stylistic qualities, iconographic features and thus their symbolic meaning were identified. It is important that there are a large number of publications abroad devoted to the artist and his works, while in China his art is subjected to strict censorship. There are almost no mentions of him on the chinese Internet. In Russia, the name of the cartoonist is practically unknown, which is the novelty of this study for both cultural studies and russian Sinology. The obvious conclusion of the research is that Badiucao is challenging the censorship and dictatorship of the PRC with his art. His caricatures are his main and strongest weapon in this confrontation. Using a wide range of artistic techniques and color palette, he talks about current events, not allowing to forget the sins of the past, demanding not only an apology for political mistakes, but a change in the attitude of the government towards the people of the two coasts – China and Taiwan.

“Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine”: Illustration Experience (1999–2019)

The author’s twenty-year experience in illustrating the multi-volume historical publishing project “Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine”, which is coordinated by the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the “Naukova Dumka” publishing house, is highlighted. The initial stage of the work at the threshold of the millennium and its features are described in detail. The author’s focus is on the process of identifying various types of illustrative (iconographic) materials in archives, museums and libraries and related difficulties; creation of a database of illustrations; cooperation of the illustrator with the publishing house. Methodological problems that arose during the illustration (in particular, related to the publication of visual sources and verification of visual sources) are analyzed. The author emphasizes that the work of an illustrator of a historical encyclopedia, although it looks easy, is actually difficult, responsible and requires a number of professional, technical, and communication skills.

ПОДРУЖНІ ПОРТРЕТИ ЯКОВА I (VI) ТА АННИ ДАНСЬКОЇ: РЕПРЕЗЕНТАТИВНИЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ І ЙОГО РЕАЛІЗАЦІЯ

In the article, the author analyzed the representative potential of marital and family portraits of the English King James I and Anne of Denmark. The author also considered the role of these portraits in creating and promoting the image of royal power. The methodological basis of the study was the methods of art history, such as iconography and iconology classical methods. The use of political iconography approaches became especially important for research. A total of 10 images were discovered, examined, and analyzed, including engravings (8), the painting (1), and the medal (1). The small number of discovered sources indicates two points. First, some of the portraits were destroyed during the revolutionary events of the middle – second half of the 17th century, known as the «English Revolution». Second, marital portraits did not play a significant role in the representative practices of King James I, who was oriented towards the representative practices of his predecessor, Elizabeth I Tudor. At the same time, the institution of the royal family remained an important and exemplary role model for the entire society. Visual sources supported this model. In particular, in the revealed and analyzed portraits, the king appears as the head of the family (paterfamilias), an example to follow, a bearer of knightly virtues and ideals. If marital portraits are an example of the superimposition of two figures (King James I and Queen consort Anne of Denmark), almost not united in terms of plot and composition, then family portraits, on the contrary, need to be more structured. Family portraits unite, as a rule, the predecessors and sometimes the predecessors of the dynasty. Artists Willem van de Passe and Gerrit Mountain depict a family tree and deceased persons. The purpose of these portraits is to construct the dynasty’s history, emphasize its legitimacy, glorify its future, and promote the children in the social (court) hierarchy.