MODERN UKRAINIAN PHOTO BOOK AS AN OBJECT OF CONCEPTUAL ART OF POSTMODERNISM

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of modern Ukrainian photo books, which have become a striking example of following the trends of postmodern art. Methodology. The study is based on the integrated use of historical, comparative methods, systems analysis, synthesis, generalization. Results. The modern Ukrainian photo book is considered as a work of conceptual art of postmodernism. Certain artistic and compositional features and design techniques of Ukranian photobooks are identified; originality of form; author's presentation of textual, content and visual components of the indoor unit: inclusion of ready-made images (ready-made) and photo manipulation, use of collages, photos of utilitarian objects, etc. Scientific novelty. On the example of art history analysis of a number of well-known Ukrainian photobooks, the characteristic features of the photobook as an object of modern conceptual art is determined, the features of figurative, stylistic, artistic and compositional design solutions are systematized. Practical significance. The artistic and compositional features and design techniques used by photographers in the implementation of creative ideas have been identified, the theoretical basis of modern conceptual art have been expanded that can be useful in future creative projects of photobooks that will have both artistic and commercial value.

ON THE DEFINITION OF PHOTOBOOK

The purpose of the article is to analyze the main approaches to the definition of the concept of a photo book and to outline the essential properties of the content of this concept. The article reviews the alternative definitions of photobook, considers the difference between photobook and photo album, suggests the classification of photobooks based on the analysis of the balance between their structural elements. A detailed discussion is given on the essential and nonessential characteristics of the photobook definition and the characteristics of the author's photo book as of a product of design and artistic practices. The reasons for standardizing the design of a modern photo book are analyzed and the originality of the design as an attribute of a modern photo book is considered. After a careful review of the literature related the article is concluded with an original definition of a photobook. A photobook is defined as a product of publishing, artistic and design activities that ensures the preservation and broadcasting of ideas, values, feelings and meanings of the world’s space-time continuum by achieving plastic unity of text, photographs and design. In the context of publishing and printing, a photo book is considered a type of a photo album. However, careful comparison of these two notions suggests that a photo book is broader than a photo album. In addition to text and photographs, the notion of a photo book in terms of structural approach includes artistic and design elements. The presence of text is not an essential for a photo book. The graphic concept of the publication is crucial for in the realization of the purpose of the photo book. The role and place of design in the process of creating a photo book is understood as a tool for concise and aesthetic design of the content (concept, idea) of the book, and visual communication. Author's photo book is a life narrative of a photographer, a person of a certain historical time, which reflects specific social relations of the cultural-historical period. The photobook communicates information, serves as a carrier of storage and transmission of information, as some sort of time capsule. Defining a photo book as an art object, a work of art provides an opportunity to reveal not only the aesthetic values reflected in the publication, but also the feelings of the author, his concern for social processes and phenomena.

СУЧАСНА ФОТОКНИГА ЯК ОБ’ЄКТ ДИЗАЙНУ: СИСТЕМАТИЗАЦІЯ ЗА СПОСОБОМ ПОДАННЯ КОНТЕНТУ

To explore the features and characteristics of a modern photobook as an object of design, its artistic and compositional solutions, types of content presentation; identify the state, trends in the development of photobooks of relevant types in the world and in Ukraine. The article uses visual-analytical analysis to process samples and written sources, typological – to identify criteria for the distribution of samples and their systematization, comparative – for stylistic, compositional, content, analysis of various works of photography, photo albums and other publications. Based on the analysis of scientific sources, modern foreign and Ukrainian photobooks, it is generalized the approaches to its artistic and compositional solutions and design, the classification of types of photo books by the way of presenting content as specific publications, the grounds for combining photos in a series is made, which include : common theme; common idea; common plot; common formalities; community of associations. The characteristics of the photo book as an object of design are formed: the features of artistic and compositional design solutions of a number of Ukrainian photobooks, which have been recognized as works of photography, are systematized; the leading tendencies of development of concrete types of photo books in the way of presenting content in Ukraine are revealed. On the basis of art analysis of photobooks by the way of presenting content, trends in its development within modern photography, features of design of a number of photographic works, which over time have acquired high artistic and market value or received recognition at international competitions are revealed. Characteristic features of photo reproduction are determined, which give Ukrainian photo books a distinct national character.

Portrait Under Construction: Lotte Jacobi in Soviet Russia and Central Asia

Traveling in Russia and Central Asia in 1932–33, the German-Jewish portrait photographer Lotte Jacobi produced an extraordinary archive of several thousand photographs documenting Soviet industrialization, collectivization, modernization, and, most profoundly, the revolution's human face. Yet she never assembled a photo book or other reflection about her experience. Based on a study of the archive in its entirety, this essay tells the story of Jacobi's journey through the lens of her photographs, building a portrait of the worlds in which she moved under the auspices of the Soviet photo agency Soiuzfoto. It discusses her portrayal of a diverse array of workers, collective farmers, peasants, street traders, intellectuals, and political figures, first in Moscow and Michurinsk and then in the newly established socialist republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where she was hosted by leading indigenous communists such as Abdurahim Hojiboyev and Fayzulla Xo'jayev. The essay theorizes some of the key problems that her corpus raises: the relative weight of political commitment and external control in its production; whether it operates in a realist or mythic mode; the extent to which it presents Soviet Russia's role in Central Asia as that of a modernizing state or colonizing empire, as its tsarist predecessor had been; and the critical status of what she called “types” with respect to the nineteenth-century racist “type” photograph. A coda considers Jacobi's belated return to her Soviet corpus for the first time in the late 1950s and early '60s, a period characterized by a post-Stalinist thaw and the nominal end of the Red Scare in the United States, to which she had emigrated in 1935 in the wake of Hitler's appointment as chancellor and Germany's subsequent transformation into a one-party dictatorship.

From Material to Infrastructure: Germaine Krull's Métal

This article reexamines Germaine Krull's seminal 1928 photo book Métal, tracing the implications of the speculative analogy drawn by the project between metal and photography. Following this analogy through nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century architectural discourse, it newly situates the photographer's investigation against Sigfried Giedion's contemporaneous theorizations of iron construction and modern photography. Rather than critiquing or celebrating industry, Krull focuses on metal as it manifests the peculiar and fraught experience of living amid large-scale technical systems. In a singular way, Métal mobilizes its driving analogy to invoke—and, moreover, to theorize photographically—the infrastructures organizing Western European modernity.

Innovative Potential of Photobook Format in Ethnocultural Communication

The features of such a widely used format as a photo book in the context of visual ethnography were reviewed in the article. It is noted that the photobook is studied as a tool for creating visual ethnographic materials that allow to conduct a research on modern cultures and ethnic groups to form a cultural identity. Methods. As the subject of analysis, modern photobooks created by the photographer from Japan Ikuru Kuwajima were selected. Results. The potential of the photobook as an author's work is revealed and its communicative potential in ethnocultural interaction is described. An ethno-photo book is defined as a format of visual communication in which each photograph has an ethnical meaning, which contributes to the creation of author's photo narration, as a specific form of reflection of an ethnos, with a representation of ethnic images. The special functions of the ethno-photo book, which are realized upon activation of the author’s principle, are highlighted: the search for their own identity; pictorial (plot) narrative about an ethnic group; creating the integrity of ethno-narration; increment of information about the ethnic group; ethnos research by means of a photo image; details of the ethnic world view; preservation of ethnic pictures of the world; comprehending the culture of another. It has been determined that a modern photo book is distinguished by documentary content and multimedia features that give its content traits of pragmatism and streaming. An ethno-photo book is manifested as a meaningful substantial work in which the author narrates a pictorial story about an ethnos through photographs, creating a holistic artistic and semantic image of the ethnos. It is concluded that all this contributes to a special emphasis of the reader on certain elements of the ethnographic image and contributes to the creation of new information about the ethnos. It is mentioned that one of the varieties of photobooks is the author's photobook, as an in-depth study of oneself in the context of the ethnicity of the territories reflected in the photo-chronicles of the photographer.

Educational Practices on Ethnic-racial Relations and the English Language Teaching through Image and Literature in an EFL Classroom

The article analyzes the unfoldings of the teaching project Introducing Literatures in English, held in 2018 at the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo (IFES), based in Alegre-ES, Brazil. The project aimed at promoting the improvement of reading, writing and speaking skills of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, departing from African Literature in English and photography, so that they had the opportunity to improve their language skills while developing a broader discussion on Africa’s ethnic-cultural and linguistic diversity, building a viewpoint about the African continent less tied to colonialism, slavery, apartheid and victimization.For reading and written analyses, the students took into consideration the photo-book Another Africa (1998), with photographs by Robert Lyons and poems by Chinua Achebe (1930-2013). Based on the poems and photographs brought to light in Another Africa, I analyzed 1) the students’ multimodal reading process, by connecting images generated by poems and photographs and written and oral texts the students produced around them; 2) the students’ reception of the poems, considering Achebe’s constant use of code-switching and 3) the construction of new viewpoints around Africa elaborated by the students, bearing in mind the importance of the role of language, memory and history, oral and literary traditions when it comes to African writers and a new perspective concerning the colonial legacy and its impact on English language.

Dialogues

The control and changes of urban spaces can reveal the intricate intersections between power and architecture. In this way, political regimes have often manipulated physical environment to promote political power and convey the identity that supports and legitimizes their rule. While power and architecture have been relevant in the past decades for scholarship produced in Europe and the United States, they have not received the same attention from scholars working on Latin American subjects. With the following essays, Dialogues would like to mitigate the present void and put forward new ways to look at and discuss the built environment. The section starts with a short introduction by Idurre Alonso and Maristella Casciato addressing the main ideas around the theme. Each of the subsequent four essays examines case studies in which the symbolic use of architecture and urbanism was used by different political actors in order to accommodate their specific ideas. Camilla Querin focuses on the marginalization of Afro and Indigenous Brazilian communities via the control of historical urban spaces in Rio de Janeiro. Catalina Fara analyzes the construction of a modern image of Buenos Aires generated by photographer Horacio Coppola and promoted by the municipality through the photo book Buenos Aires 1936. Visión Fotográfica. Cristóbal Jácome-Moreno examines the Eighth Pan-American Congress of Architecture (1952) in Mexico and its links to the government in the promotion of a unifying architectural past and present for the country. In the final essay, Lisa Blackmore addresses the urban reforms associated with hydro-engineering by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, linking them to his interest in projecting an image of modernity.