Specific Requirements: 1) What can you learn from these photos about the organization of life, about people, about ideas and behaviors in Soviet and Post-Soviet times? What can you learn about gender roles? What can you say about people’s relationship to each other, to their family, to work, to the state? What did it mean to be a child in the Soviet Union? How was it to be old? What does it mean to be rich nowadays? All kinds of social and moral issues that you will observe, will work. 2) Many of the photos either contain intended jokes and grotesque or they create a poetic, romantic attitude toward people presented. I would like to hear about the subjectivity of the photographers in creating these kinds of framing. Are the photos by foreign photographers different from the Russian ones? If so, in what way? What kind of effect did they want to achieve? What role did the art of photography play in the Soviet society and in the foreign media? 3) How is modern Russia different from the Soviet one? How is modern photography gaze different from the previous ways to see and focus?
General Requirements: 1) What was the intention standing behind the creation of these works of art? 2) What kind of issues did the authors want to draw attention to? 3) What kind of images or broader picture did the authors seek to produce and what kind of expressive means did they use to achieve this goal? 4) What kind of reaction was expected on the part of implied audience? 5) Does this genre have any unique tasks, opportunities and specifics as related to other genres of Russian arts and to corresponding genre in other cultures you are familiar with? 6) What kind of cultural stereotypes portrayed and what kind of expressive means used by the authors did strike you, grab your attention or make you see Russian and your own cultures in a different way? 7) How do the issues analyzed in your essays relate to our class readings and discussions?