Authors

Victoria Musvik¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

In the 1990s several editions of the festival of female photography "Fotografiruyut zhenshchiny" took place in several Russian cities. The first one was organized on the verge of the USSR's collapse, in 1991 in Ryazan’; the article about it appeared in the newspaper "Izvestia" on the third day of the August coup. Two next followed in Ryazan’ in 1992 and 1994, and then in Smolensk in 1995 and 1997. Finally, after relocating to Russia's centre, to Moscow in 1999, and in 2000 to St. Petersburg, their energy was extinguished. There have been seven festivals in total and many more exhibitions around the country. Interestingly, the dynamics was contrary to the one that we are used to: "the light of perestroika" did not come from the capital, and an important role was played by female photographers from local communities. 

 For many women who were not based in the metropolis or big cities, these festivals became the starting point of their careers or gave them significant support in their professional lives. This was especially important in the previously male-dominated field of photography. They also signalled the beginning of a new era: if in pre-perestroika Russia there was only a small number of independent/amateur female photographers, by the mid-2010s their number has significantly increased. Yet these festivals are not part of a contemporary photography history narrative and are almost totally forgotten. 

 In this paper I will look at the reasons both of their establishment and of the current “memory hole”. I am especially interested in the way that the dynamics of relations between the local and the metropolitan influenced changes in female photographic self-representation. One of my aims is also to see how their ousting from collective memory has been connected to current antifeminist tendencies in contemporary Russian society,