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Maria Taroutina on Katherine MH Reischl: Photographic Katherine M. H. Reischl. Photographic Literacy: Cameras in the Hands of Russian Authors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 320 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-5017-2436-7. Reviewed by Maria Taroutina (Yale-NUS College) Published on H-SHERA (July, 2020) Commissioned by Hanna Chuchvaha (University of Calgary) Katherine Reischl’s eloquent new monograph tion of the photographic medium, so much so that examines the complex and multivalent ways in the writer’s frequently reproduced image became which some of Russia’s leading authors understood an important visual emblem for his entire epoch. and engaged with the novel medium of photogra‐ The chapter also investigates the subtle and perva‐ phy. The book begins with the 1860s and runs sive influence that photography exerted on Tol‐ roughly through to the late 1930s, with the conclu‐ stoy’s writing and highlights several instances of sion focusing on the post-World War II works of the author’s “camera eye” at work in his various Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. novels, such as The Cossacks (1863) and Anna Reischl traces the chronological evolution of pho‐ Karenina (1878). It culminates with a discussion of tography as a technological, cultural, and visual Tolstoy’s “crisis of authorship” and the intense dis‐ medium, while simultaneously analyzing a diverse pute that broke out over his copyright and literary set of authorial word-image strategies that were legacy between his wife, Sofia, and his chief disci‐ employed by key literary figures at specific histori‐ ple, Vladimir Chertkov, with the latter prevailing so cal junctures. Each discrete case study is contextu‐ that Tolstoy’s image ultimately became “the prop‐ alized within a dense network of political, ideologi‐ erty of the public sphere” (p. 51) at the same time cal, cultural, and theoretical concerns surrounding that photography was recognized in Russia as an questions of modern subjectivity, authorial au‐ artistic medium in its own right. thenticity, and visual and literary representation, The second chapter similarly interrogates the all of which evolved with and responded to the photographic and literary experimentations of the continuously shifting environment of late imperi‐ novelist, short-story writer, and playwright Leonid al and early Soviet Russia. Throughout the course Andreev and, to a lesser degree of Silver Age au‐ of the book, Reischl attends to the numerous con‐ thors Vasilii Rozanov and Maksimilian Voloshin. nections and continuities between individual au‐ Here Reischl emphasizes the idiosyncratic and thors and projects, carefully scrutinizing their generative intersections between Andreev’s public cross-temporal dialogues across several decades. persona and the intimate images of his domestic The book opens with the late nineteenth cen‐ life, which he photographed himself and strategi‐ tury and a consideration of Lev Tolstoy’s exponen‐ cally deployed as visual extensions of his fictional, tially growing authorial celebrity and the manner literary worlds, whose esoteric, demonic themes in which it was further augmented by the prolifera‐ mirrored photography’s liminal ability to connect H-Net Reviews the realms of the living and the dead. Reischl con‐ his 1936 American Photographs series. As with pre‐ tends that through the active fusion of “life writing vious chapters, the fourth one lingers on the com‐ and light writing as method” (pp. 15-16) writers like plex interrelations between text and image and Andreev, Rozanov, and Voloshin embraced a novel their ability to dialectically encode Soviet alterity form of creative modernist intermediality that be‐ —and by extension implied superiority—to the came integral to the very “formation of [their] lit‐ West with its many societal and political ills that erary imagination[s]” (p. 17). these “photo-stories” sought to expose. Lastly, the The ensuing two chapters shift their attention conclusion examines the memoirs of émigré writ‐ to the Soviet era and survey the different ways the ers Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenit‐ regime harnessed photographic processes and doc‐ syn, whose transgressive, revisionist reclamations umentary writing toward forging a new Soviet citi‐ of history “unwrite” the official photographic, po‐ zenry and socialist state. Photography was em‐ litical, and ideological accounts of the Soviet ployed on a large scale as both a pedagogical and regime. agitational tool, with many “author-photogra‐ Overall, the book is clearly and lucidly written phers” rising to the task at hand throughout the and incorporates a wealth of rich archival detail 1920s and 1930s. The third chapter specifically that gives real texture and historical palpability to bridges the pre- and postrevolutionary epochs by the narrative. It is also replete with sensitive and exploring the documentary writing and photogra‐ astute visual analyses of individual images and ob‐ phy of the Symbolist ethnographer and diarist jects, as well as compelling formal readings of en‐ Mikhail Prishvin, who strove to renegotiate and re‐ tire photo series. For example, in the second chap‐ brand his authorial subjectivity in the wake of the ter, Reischl masterfully foregrounds the materiali‐ Bolshevik Revolution and the novel demands of ty of Andreev’s and Rozanov’s family photo al‐ Soviet society. Mikhail Prishvin advanced the hy‐ bums, emphasizing the handwritten pencil nota‐ brid new genre of the ocherk, which united text tions on the photographs’ grainy surfaces and the and image in a mutually generative dialectical re‐ traces of glue still visible on their reverse sides, tes‐ lationship. Comparing his prerevolutionary publi‐ tifying to their discrete existence as tangible, cation The Land of Unfrightened Birds (1907), with unique objects. Indeed, Reischl powerfully and per‐ the later 1934 edition by the same title, as well as suasively interweaves the multiple thematic and the infamous History of the Construction of the conceptual strands of the book with the real histor‐ White Sea-Baltic Canal (1934), Reischl demon‐ ical conditions and lived realities of the individual strates how Prishvin’s project aimed to fuse the self “author-photographers” under discussion, adroitly with nature and actively resisted the materialist moving between their micro and macro settings. aesthetics of Aleksandr Rodchenko, Dziga Vertov, In addition to her insightful explications of the and Sergei Tretiakov, while nonetheless dynami‐ particular conditions of the photographs’ and pho‐ cally reflecting the transformations in Russia both to series’ creation, display, and dissemination, Reis‐ in the natural and constructed realms. chl also devotes considerable attention to their re‐ The fourth chapter considers Soviet represen‐ ception and theorization in relation to new tech‐ tations of the capitalist West. More precisely, it an‐ nologies and contemporary media theory, provid‐ alyzes Ilya Ehrenburg’s experimentations with ing a robust conceptual and methodological oblique urban views created using a lateral framework through which to read and understand viewfinder in his seminal publication My Paris these layered composite works. (1933) and Ilya Ilf’s striking invention of a novel While Photographic Literacy undoubtedly hybrid genre of the “photo-story,” or fotoraskaz, in makes a significant contribution to the fields of lit‐ 2 H-Net Reviews erary and Slavic studies, it also has important im‐ miliarized modes of thinking about well-trodden plications for a number of other subject areas, avant-garde territory and canonical cultural prac‐ such as art history, visual culture, and media theo‐ titioners. For instance, in her third chapter Reischl ry. In fact, one of the book’s most salient features is examines how artists and writers from a range of its impressive interdisciplinarity and the manner backgrounds and of different stylistic and philo‐ in which it tells a sophisticated “interart” story sophical persuasions collectively worked on the that combines the textual and the visual, literature USSR in Construction project, thus nuancing the and art history, technology and aesthetics, docu‐ persistent notion of a single, monolithic totalitari‐ mentation and design, and fact and fiction—an an vision that we habitually attribute to the Stalin‐ approach which is gaining increasing momentum ist 1930s. Rather than rehash the same set of argu‐ in Russian and Slavic studies and which builds on ments and interpretations around pioneering indi‐ important precedents, such as Molly Brunson’s viduals and movements, Reischl’s textured ac‐ Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840– count offers a refreshing alternative and impor‐ 1890 (2016), Michael Kunichika’s “Our Native An‐ tant corrective to the established histories of Sovi‐ tiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture et photography. She provides a broader birds-eye of Russian Modernism (2015), and Colleen Mc‐ view on the multiple and pervasive ways docu‐ Quillen’s The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing mentary photography penetrated and shaped ev‐ Life, Literature, and Costumes in Russia (2013).[1] eryday life and public consciousness in the first Akin to these studies, Photographic Literacy chal‐ two decades of the Soviet state, influencing both lenges the entrenched logocentricity of Russian the outlook and subjectivity of regular people as culture and the continued privileging of its literary much as those of prominent writers and art practi‐ tradition above the visual, musical, and perform‐ tioners. Additionally, the book adopts a wide-rang‐
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