The experience of creating a database "The photographic images of students of educational institutions of the State labor reserves of the Sverdlovsk region (1940s-50s)"

Razinkov Sergey Lvovich ORCID: 0000-0002-0018-7931 PhD in History Associate professor of the Chair of Theory and History of International Relations, Ural Federal University; Associate professor of the Chair of Document study, Law, History and Russian Language, Russian State Vocational Pedagogical University 620012, Russia, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, Mashstroiteley str., 11, room 509 sergerazinkov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Thanks to the "visual turn" in historical science, since the last quarter of the 20th century, photography has gone from illustrative material to recognition of its independence as a historical source ^{[1, pp. 3, 14, 22]}. At the same time, new ideas about "visuality" are connected, first of all, with the use by historians of the concept of image, which, according to L.N. Mazur, remains "poorly structured and largely uncertain" to this day, since its reconstruction and interpretation is based not on logical principles of modeling, but on "perception"through "qualitative" methods of cognition, which has a pronounced subjective character based on sensory experience ^{[7, pp. 100-101]}. David Zeitlin, professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, notes that "visual images are problematic [for researchers] and have a strange status in the social sciences ... they are not so much ignored as bracketed, gestures are made in their direction, but not taken seriously; visual anthropology remains [secondary] a scientific field, not being part of the mainstream, which is dominated by models based on linguistic and textual analysis" ^[10].

Thus, on the one hand, the interpretation of photography is carried out by a historian, mainly on the basis of a holistic, generalized, value-symbolic perception of a visual image, however, on the other hand, researchers admit the possibility of using quantitative methods and decomposition to study visual images through "generalization of empirical material ... through the use of logical (typology, modeling, structuring)" ^{[7, p. 101]}. In the latter case, computer databases can be used as an effective method of systematization of information, which allows to collectively reflect the structural, functional and dynamic features of visual sources. Computer information systems and database technologies provide: 1) effective structuring, attributive search and extraction of information about visual sources; 2) integration of the image with textual information from other sources; 3) the ability to associate information with parts of the image and contextual data extraction; 4) improvement of the quality of the image or its parts [see details: 9]. Based on the above, it seems to us that the possibility of using database technology to reconstruct the image of students of the USSR state labor reserves system in the 1940s and 1950s is very productive.

The creation of the system of state labor reserves in 1940 artificially integrated youth representatives into one social group – students of state labor reserves, which was heterogeneous, uniting boys and girls of different ages (14-17 years old), origin, education, level and living conditions, respectively, the way of thinking, interests, and development were different. Such processes contributed to the formation of a specific socio–cultural environment of students, which, on the one hand, was regulated by a paramilitary system of rules and norms uniting young people into study groups, on the other hand, it was "adjusted" by living conditions, informal communication, work tasks and real living conditions.

The basis for the reconstruction of the portrait of students in the system of state labor reserves is the allocation of subculture markers in the optics of "parade" (characteristics, norms and patterns of student behavior officially established by political and social institutions) and "non-parade" (systems deviating from the ceremonial portrait of stable cultural values and behavioral practices of students). The categories of such markers include:

1. Socio-demographic characteristics (gender and age characteristics, status and social positions, peculiarities of nationality and historical and cultural space, elements of urban life and educational space, by types of educational institutions and regions)

2. Cultural values, mental characteristics (group identity, worldview, value orientations and personal qualities, stable ideas about priorities, norms of behavior in different situations – in school and at work)

3. Behavioral practices (educational practices, work at work, types of self-expression, lifestyle, spending free time and leisure, habits)

4. Appearance (clothes, hairstyle, distinctive signs) ^{[5, pp. 67-69]}.

Photographic images of students of educational institutions of the state labor reserves of the Sverdlovsk region can be applied to varying degrees in the reconstruction of markers of all these categories of socio–cultural portrait of students - not only their appearance, but also some socio-demographic indicators, external characteristics of behavioral practices and collective actions of students, and even individual components of the worldview and value orientations of this social group (through the analysis of slogans, posters and other elements of visual agitation captured in the photo).

The purpose of the database "The image of students of educational institutions of the State labor reserves of the Sverdlovsk region in photographic documents (1940-50-ies)" is the reconstruction of the "ceremonial" and "non-parade" portrait of students of the state labor reserves (using the example of visual images of students of educational institutions of the Sverdlovsk region in the 1940s-50s). Analysis of the information contained in The database will allow you to answer a number of research questions and identify important characteristics of the visual image and social portrait of students:

- types of activities, including various aspects of work and educational activities, "bodily activity" of students;

- acts of human interaction and non-verbal communication (gestures, facial expressions, body postures, etc.)

- used objects of material culture

- everyday patterns of behavior reconstructed through a series of photographs;

- "atypical experience", a description of deviant groups of students, irregular clothing, atypical behavior.

Characteristics of the database structure and tables

The database is implemented in the Microsoft Access 2003 database management system and has a structure consisting of a central table "Photos", two main tables ("Persons" and "Visual agitation") associated with a central one-to-one relationship, and one additional table ("Clothes") associated with the table "Persons" with a one-to-one relationship (see Fig. 1), as well as 20 auxiliary reference tables containing systematized information (type of photo on various classification grounds, description of pose, facial expressions and gestures of a person, items of clothing and shoes, etc.) necessary to simplify the entry and processing of database information. To fill service tables with data programmatically, you need to have a library for accessing databases Data Access Objects (DAO) 3.5 and higher.

Fig. 1. Data schema (relationships between database tables)

1. The 25 fields of the "Photo" table contain a general description of each photo (type of photo for various classification reasons, dating, place of creation of the photo, educational institution, etc.) of students of educational institutions of the state labor reserves of the Sverdlovsk region. Special attention is paid to the description of photography based on various classification grounds: by genre (portrait, staged, documentary, genre, etc.), the number of persons depicted (individual, group, collective), the photography plan (general, medium, large), the primary source of the photo (state archive, newspaper, family archive, etc.). Separate fields of the table are reserved for describing the interior (photo studio, classroom, workshop / workshop of the enterprise, dormitory / living room, dining room, red corner / club, facade of an educational institution, outdoors / outdoors) and the content of collective actions performed by participants in photography (production activities, educational activities, demonstration / construction, physical exercises / sports competition, rehearsal / performance of amateur performances, military training, collective reading, rest).

2. The 16 fields of the "Persons" table contain information about the visual image of the persons depicted in the photo, including posture, gestures, facial expressions, hairstyle, interaction with other persons and objects.

When describing the visual image of a student, separate elements of non–verbal semiotics are used, related to kinesics (description and interpretation of gestures, primarily hand positions, and poses – a biologically conditioned, static way of placing the body in space relative to the position of its parts); oculesics (the position of the eyes, gaze and visual behavior of people in the process of communication); haptics (touch and tactile communication) ^{[4, p. 22]}. It should be noted that the use of these elements of nonverbal semiotics to describe and interpret photographic documents has significant limitations associated with the contradiction between the dynamic nature of gestures / visual behavior / tactile communication and the static essence of a photograph, in which the ability to "stop a moment" "to a certain extent limits the possibilities of knowing what is left outside the frame" ^{[6, p. 222]}. Using the terminology of K. Geertz (Clifford Geertz) and his example with two blinking boys, one of whom makes an involuntary eyelid movement, and the other gives a secret signal to a friend ^{[3, p. 12]}, we can say that in the case of a photo in the database, only a "subtle description" is possible (i.e., "phenomenalistic observation" static fixation of poses and gestures), rather than a "dense description" that allows you to interpret gestures, glances, and touches of people in the photo from the point of view of communication and understanding of the image.

Fig. 2. Reference table "Hand position(s)"

3. The table "Clothes and shoes" contains information about the items of clothing and shoes worn by the persons in the photo. A detailed description of each item of clothing / footwear is assumed, indicating its type (headdress, outerwear, underwear, shoes, accessory) and type (for example, for outerwear: tunic, trousers, overcoat, jacket, coat / half-coat, skirt, dress, etc.)

4. The table "Visual agitation" contains information about the elements of visual agitation placed on the photo (indicating the texts of slogans written on banners and posters). 

Data entry and primary analysis: normativity vs individuality

The sources for filling the database were albums of individual educational institutions of the state labor reserves, dedicated to describing the results of their participation in the All-Union Socialist Competition in 1943-1945, deposited in the fund of photographic documents of the Center for Documentation of Public Organizations of the Sverdlovsk region (CDOOO). The database contains information about photographs from six albums: Kamyshlovsky ZHU No. 1 for the II quarter of 1943 – 14 photos [CDOOO, f 221, op. 3, d. 238], Nizhne-Tagilsky RU No. 25 for the I quarter of 1944 – 18 photos [CDOOO, f 221, op. 3, 243], Nizhne-Tagil school of Federal Law No. 7 for the first quarter of 1944 (29 photos) [CDOOO, f 221, op. 3, d. 244], for 1944 (23 photos) [CDOOO, f 221, op. 3, d. 245] and the first quarter of 1945 (23 photos) [TSDOOSO, f 221, op. 3, 264], Kamensk-Ural school of Federal Law No. 84 for the first quarter of 1944 (38 photos) [TSDOOSO, f 221, op. 3, d. 246]. The distribution of photos in the database by type (individual, group, collective) is shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

The distribution of photos in the database by type based on the number of faces depicted

Source: compiled by the author based on the database materials

The data on the photographs, the description of the depicted persons and the elements of their clothes and shoes were entered using a graphical form (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. The form for entering information about the photo in the database

When interpreting the content of visual sources reflecting the images of students of state labor reserves, it is important to establish the degree of authenticity of images, their compliance with the real conditions of life and activities of students of educational institutions. As the researchers note, from the very first years of the existence of the Soviet state, photography was endowed with a propaganda function, in the 1930s its ideological significance increased significantly, and in the first half of the 1940s visual propaganda through photography in war conditions became part of everyday life ^{[1, pp. 20-22]}. At the same time, as O. V. Gavrishina notes, since the mid-1930s, photographs have fully manifested "the desire for normality: not in the sense of normality, but in the sense of a normal, reproducible way of life," which has limited content and is associated with a very pronounced idea of due, external assessment, expert At the same time, "the identity of a person in a photograph is quite difficult to build: the values of collective and personal (public and private) are not opposed to each other, but mutually define each other" ^{[2, pp. 41-43]}.

To the greatest extent, the syncretism of normativity and individuality is manifested in photographs reflecting the numerous and diverse collective actions and behavioral practices of students (see Table 2).  

Table 2.

Distribution of photos in the database by types of behavioral practices of the depicted persons

Source: compiled by the author based on the database materials

By behavioral practices we mean relatively stable patterns of behavior of individuals and social groups, as a rule, repeatedly reproduced by them in typical life situations. The variety of life situations determines the breadth and, to some extent, the duality of the manifestation of behavioral practices, which, being a kind of social practices, can be collective and individual; mainly everyday, institutional, stable to habitalization, but also extraordinary, protest and variable; involving an actor as a subject or object. The database materials made it possible to more accurately identify and systematize the behavioral practices of students of educational institutions of state labor reserves (see Table 3).

Table 3.

Examples of behavioral practices in educational institutions of state labor reserves

Source: compiled by the author based on the database materials

Fig. 4. The canteen of the vocational school No. 25 (enlarged part of the frame with a barefoot student). 

Undoubtedly, most of the scenes captured in the above-mentioned photographs were staged, they were undoubtedly carefully thought out and selected for placement in official albums, where there was no place for random images. At the same time, displaying mainly markers of "parade" in the appearance of students, in exceptional cases, the photographic images contained in the database reflect (primarily due to the detailed description in the database of each element of the person's appearance) certain aspects of the "non-parade portrait", unsightly everyday practices of students, including those features that provided survival reflected the diversity of life's problems, demands, and demands. For example, in the photo of the dining room [CDOOSO, f 221, op. 3, d. 243, l. 42] from the official album of the vocational school No. 25 Nizhny Tagil (1944), one of the students (in the center of the photo) is dining at a table without shoes, barefoot (see Fig. 4). Identification of this fact deviations from the established form became possible, first of all, due to the possibility of a detailed description in the database of each item of clothing and shoes of the persons depicted in the photo.

Conclusion

Visual images reflected in photographs from official albums of railway, vocational schools and schools of the Federal District are an important element of the reconstruction of the socio-cultural portrait of students of state labor reserves (appearance, some socio-demographic indicators, external characteristics of behavioral practices and collective actions of students, etc.)

The database "Image of students of educational institutions of the State labor Reserves of the Sverdlovsk region in photographic documents (1940s-50s)" is aimed at reconstructing the "ceremonial" and "non-parade" portraits of students of educational institutions of the Sverdlovsk region in the 1940s-50s through the use of elements of non-verbal semiotics and the concept of "dense description" for a detailed description of poses, gestures, visual behavior, spatial interaction, clothing and shoes of the persons depicted in the photo. The photographs described in the database make it possible to visualize the appearance of students and highlight the given behavioral practices of working youth, thereby completing the formation and researcher of a holistic view of the "ceremonial" portrait of students. 

Thanks:

The study was carried out with financial supportThe Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-28-01065 "Non-parade Portrait" by Danila Kuzmich: the potential for updating the system of State labor Reserves in the subculture of students (1940s-1950s)")

Application

Example of a database entry

You can simply select and copy link from below text field.