Denis Skopin

Denis Skopin learned a PhD in Philosophy from Paris 8 University. He held several research positions, including that of a research director at Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris) and taught at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg University. His research and teaching interests range across photography studies, political philosophy and history, with focus on photographic practices and circulation of photographs under dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.

The project

Title: Photographs of political life in Russia after February 24, 2022

"The aim of this project is to write an “alternative visual history” of Putin and his regime. Today, It's fair to say that today, the “iconography” of Putin and his regime has already taken shape. This is the result of a long process of consolidation of Putin's power and the gradual clarification of the nature of his regime, which has moved from a simulation of democracy to an openly dictatorial government. However, no serious study has been devoted to the iconography of Putin himself and of Putinism as a political system. Existing publications are limited to short, rare articles devoted to individual photographs. These publications were of temporary importance and are now forgotten. The research project aims to write an alternative visual history of Putinism by deconstructing existing visual narratives about Russian elites. From an empirical point of view, this task can be described as the identification of “false” photographs, i.e. photographs which, to a greater or lesser extent, give the viewer a false impression of the Russian government and political life in the country. There are at least two types of visual documents that differ from each other and can be tentatively classified as “misleading” photos. On the one hand, there are photographs of Putin as a “strong leader”. Although the images of Putin that have taken shape in the Russian and Western illustrated media are different, they have one thing in common: in both cases, Putin appears as a “strong” leader. While the image of a strong leader has positive connotations in the official Russian media, in the Western press there is a tendency to “demonize” Putin. On the other hand, the photos have been manipulated. One example is a photo of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (accused by the liberal press of being an FSB agent), from which a wristwatch worth tens of thousands of dollars has been removed. The aim of the project is to determine the place of these photographic manipulations (direct and indirect) in the structure of the regime and how they characterize it."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Centre d'Études Russes, Caucasiennes, Est-européen et Centrasiatiques (CERCEC)

Selective bibliography

Monographs:

• Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia: Defacing the Enemy. London, Routledge, 2022.
• Œdipe sous l’objectif. La photographie et la psychanalyse [Oedipus under the lens. Photography and Psychoanalysis]. Paris, Harmattan, 2018
• La photographie de groupe et la politique de la disparition dans la Russie de Staline [Group Photography and the politics of Disappearance in Stalin’s Russia]. Paris, Harmattan, 2015;