Documentary photography as one of the sources of knowledge of Russian historical and legal science

This research article offers an original concept for interpreting and systematizing the value of visual sources in historical and legal science, using archival photographic materials as an example. It also examines their research and practical significance. The article presents the author's definition of historical and legal photography, as well as outlines its essential characteristics and their classification. Historical and legal photographs are proposed to be classified into several types based on various criteria: 1) law enforcement photographs. These include: penitentiary and criminal procedural photographs; 2) political and legal photographs; 3) administrative and legal photographs; 4) socio-legal photographs; 5) photographs on the activities of law enforcement agencies; 6) commercial photographs; 7) Reproductive photographic materials - containing images of individual legal monuments. All of the above-mentioned types of documentary photographs contain unique evidence of the past. They illuminate various spheres of legal relations: civil, criminal procedural, administrative, and other matters, both public and private. Studying this information is an extremely important task for historical and legal science. Therefore, the functional significance of these sources for this purpose is particularly emphasized in the text of the article. The author divided all the functions of historical and legal photography into three groups. Among them, the following are particularly prominent: a) research functions: ontological and epistemological; b) educational function; c) applied functions. In conclusion, the author summarizes the study and emphasizes a problem existing in Russian scholarship: namely, the lack of demand for documentary photography in historical and legal research. Despite all their merits and advantages, these materials are rarely incorporated into scholarly discourse, including in the study of the history of customary law, which inevitably embodies traditions in specific life situations. In turn, it is impossible to fully and comprehensively understand it without a visual understanding and assessment of scenes from everyday life. This circumstance is explained by the methodological and psychological unpreparedness of researchers and their inability to work with visual materials, including documentary photographic ones. They are neglected by Russian historical and legal scholarship, where a formulaic, uniform methodological approach to the selection and study of sources still prevails. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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