Among the earliest ethnographic photographs were possibly those taken by the anthropologist and ethnographer Ivan Polyakov during an expedition to Western Siberia in 1876. He brought to St. Petersburg a collection of 64 photographs dedicated to one of the indigenous peoples of Siberia - the Khanty. Based on these, as well as on archival photographs of the peoples of the north (Samoyeds) from the collection of the famous researcher of the times of Tsar’s Russia Dmitry Anuchin, made by him personally and transferred to his collection later by students and followers, received by us from open sources and also from individual storage units of our university museum, we may obtain a certain picture of the ethnographic landscape of those areas.
First attempts to use visual research methods in anthropology and sociology were related to the desire to preserve a disappearing phenomenon and to capture it in memory. Classical anthropologist, using visual means (photo or movie camera), was engaged in the study of cultures remote from the usual space and time. Until now visual anthropology in Russia developing within the same ethnographic tradition, focuses on audiovisual variety of the world heritage. Comparing archived photos to the images of these peoples created by visual anthropological films (by Asen Balikci, Jouko Aaltonen, Liivo Niglas, and others), we may find interesting patterns and features not only in their life, but also in the field of communication with them. If at the end of the 19th century a rather significant intercultural barrier could exist between the researcher and the object of research, today the boundaries are blurred, and the dialogue of cultures could be built on a new background, what gives us the opportunity to draw parallels that allow images of the distant past to be perceived in understandable modern sense.
