Abstract
Photographers use Instagram to display and share images of ruined cultural landmarks with the broader public. In Russia, where thousands of historical villas and churches are found in a state of decay and are in danger of complete destruction, creating awareness about the state of such cultural heritage has important political and societal implications. In the process of documenting the decay of cultural landmarks, the photographers, I argue, come out as civic activists who inform the public about the state of affairs in the field of heritage protection as well as engage in the discussion about the role of the state, the church and the citizens in this practice. By drawing on a case study of three Instagram accounts @deadokey, @krokhino and @samasyava and using qualitative visual content analysis of Instagram imagery, I frame, explore and interpret visual posts made in order to raise awareness about decaying cultural landmarks.
This chapter was written as a part of the research project Uncertain Archives funded by Swedish Research Council.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2017 Instagram integrated a new feature—Archive Posts—which can be used to hide any photos and stories from being seen by anyone and to retrieve any “deleted” from the profile photo in two clicks. Judging by its features, Instagram Archive feature can be best compared to a Recycle Bin—a location where your files are temporarily stored till its emptied. As soon as a photo is deleted from Instagram Archive, the recovery of the content is no longer guaranteed. This feature will not be discussed in this chapter as it falls outside of the scope of the analysed material.
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Kalinina, E. (2020). Making Ruins Great Again: Documentation and Participation on Instagram. In: Davydov, S. (eds) Internet in Russia. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33016-3_15
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