Sergei Zhirkevich photograph collection, 1980-1998

Scope and Content

The photographic prints and manuscript material were produced during an ethnographic study conducted by Sergei Zhirkevich in which he documented the enduring folk and religious traditions of regional provincial life in the former Soviet Union. Zhirkevich spent over a decade interviewing local people, recording music, and photographing in the Pskov Region of Russia, the former Baltic states, the Leningrad region, Kazakhstan, and the region north of the Caucasus Mountains. The resulting monograph, Ot Zamogil'ia do Blagodati (From Beyond the Grave to Blessed Grace), was published in 1999.