Photo albums

Item set

Title

Photo albums

Description

The secret police developed several methods for representing and curating visual materials stemming from surveilled groups or persons. Photo albums represent one of these, although they were relatively rarely used compared to other means of archiving and ordering photographic materials. Some of the albums we find in the secret police archival collections were compiled by secret police officers and included both images confiscated from the target person/group and images created by the secret police (surveillance or crime scene photos, images of confiscated items). These compilations were more than just a handsome, practical way of ordering visual materials: they formed a carefully structured narrative to incriminate religious groups as dangerous and hostile to the regime. As well as photo albums created by the secret services, secret police archives also contain albums that were confiscated from persons and families. Containing family portraits or shots of family events, these albums were valuable for the authorities because they provided information on family relations and friendship networks, the life histories and the social background of their owners. The police could then use this invaluable information in its operational work.

Creator

Agnes Hesz

Publisher

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme No . 677355

Bibliographic Citation

Agnes Hesz, "Photo albums"
http://hiddengalleries.eu/digitalarchive/s/en/item-set/351

Date Created

2019

Items

Advanced search

  • Confiscated family album Bessarabia and Odessa

    These photographs are part of a family album found on a woman who tried to cross the border between USSR and Romania that was confiscated by the Soviet secret police in 1940. They depict different moments from the life of the family, such as a wedding and a day spent at the seaside in Odessa. The album contains images of members of the family at different ages and of some of the family’s friends. For over a hundred years both banks of Dniester river were part of the Russian Empire until 1918 when Bessarabia united with Romania and the river became frontier between Romania and the Soviet Uni

  • Secret police photo album on a Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir Romania

    These images come from a photo album compiled by the Securitate on the Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir in the town of Ocna Sibiului (Vízakna), Transylvania. The first image shows the title page of the album with a short introduction to the choir and its supposed activity. In the second image, we can see photos which were most probably taken by the secret police displaying the decorated walls of the choir’s meeting place. The third image includes shots taken in the usual fashion of crime scene photographs of items confiscated from the choir during a secret police raid. The fourth image shows c

  • Secret police photographs of Ioannite community Ukraine

    The photographs come from a 1959 KGB criminal case against three members of an Ioannite community in Cherkasy region, Ukraine. The images were designed as a photo album pasted into the secret police file. They portray father Mitrofan, the priest of the community in his house, which had been turned into a clandestine chapel. The first photo collage shows father Mitrofan dressed in Orthodox vestments against a background of icons, performing a religious service and talking to women, seemingly his followers. The second photo collage records the ritual washing of feet, also performed in father Mit

  • KGB Photo Album Ukrainian Greek Catholic Leaders

    These photographs come from a KGB internal publication which is in the form of a photo album. It features arrested Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Josyf Slipyi, Ilia Blavatsky and Vasyl Kavatsiv and was published in Krasnoyarsk in 1958. The photographs of the arrested persons open the photo album (Image 1). The image of the metropolitan Josyf Slipyi, the head the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, is placed in the centre. Vasyl Kavatsiv (left), an underground priest and a secret monk, is defined under his photo as a nationalist, closely linked to Blavatsky. Ilia Blavatsky (right) was a Greek Catholi