Photographic documents as a source on the history of Siberian academic science: Photo archive of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The paper dwells on working with specific historical sources using new approaches based on the method of historical factography. The results of the project Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Electronic photo archive http://www.soran1957.ru are presented. The SB RAS photo archive was collected for 50 years. The mastermind of this project was Academician Mikhail A. Lavrentiev, the then Chairman of the Siberian Branch, and the executor of this idea was photo-correspondent Rashid Akhmerov. Each SB RAS research institute has preserved its own collection. The purpose of the project was integration of those sources. This task was carried out by the personnel of the Institute of Informatics Systems. The special-purpose information system soran1957 was developed under the leadership of Prof. Alexander Marchuk. Other SB RAS organizations were co-executors of this project: they provided their own collections together with descriptions. Photographic documents as historical sources have a great potential. The challenge though is that they require additional verification because the photos themselves cannot speak. If at least one of the profiles of a photo is known - the person(s), event, date or place - we can try to recover the others. To achieve this, additional research has to be made involving other historical sources. The context having been restored, we obtain a trustworthy historical source that cannot be falsified through interpretation. In this case, ''artistic processing'' of photographs (staged photography) is ruled out since photographs can have negative images or copies, and falsification will be revealed. From our experience, we have had no evidence of obvious falsification in the history of the Siberian academic science. The potential of photography as a means of fixing and describing the reality is apparent. Let us consider a situation reflecting the process of designing reality. What is meant here is not art, but a documentary design. The design of reality is not analogous to falsification, either. The characters displayed in the photographs can be artificially placed in the historical context, for example, ''a scientist speaking to schoolchildren''. Some portraits refer to this type of staged photography, as well as photographs intended for documents. The paper provides arguments supporting the creation of open-access electronic archives of historical documents. Using photographic documents as historical sources on the history of academic science in Siberia has been considered. The potential of photography as a means of fixing, describing and designing reality has been revealed. Approaches to verification of photographs by placing them within historical contexts have been presented.

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