This book examines the role of photography as a powerful language of expressing collective identities in Eastern Europe during the period of dramatic socio-political transformation associated with the slow rise of national and ethnic consciousness, the dawn of empire and the outbreak of the two World Wars.

From the 1867 All-Russian Ethnographic Exhibition to the war-time Nazi scientific surveys, this innovative account looks closely at how photographic practices and records were applied, borrowed, appropriated, transmitted to exert or subvert power, and used as a tool in negotiating collective identities. Discussing a wide range of little-known archives, libraries of scientific institutions, learned societies, and professional and amateur photographers, it focuses on those ambitious photographic projects which not only shaped the various national, ethnic or imperial identities but also went to the heart of the idea of Eastern Europe.

By juxtaposing photography with other visual and non-visual heritage discourses and practices, this book offers both a new perspective in the field of East European studies and a novel approach to the history of photography.