Article

Name: Ethnography of Prison According to Parajanov

Authors: A. G. Mikayelyan

Sergei Parajanov Museum

Abstract: In the article, the prison period of Sergei Parajanov’s art is examined – Parajanov served his sentence in 1973–1977 in the high security camps in Ukraine. Following the graphic works, collages and film scenarios which he created in the prison, one can conceive of the everyday life in the Soviet prison of 1970s –1980s, more than that, get an outline of the ethnography of the Soviet prison. Parajanov often uses ethnographic realities and attributes in his movies, some of these movies are even considered to be a specific variety of ethnographic cinema. However, there is an opinion that the film director, while reflecting ethnographic realities, no less created pseudoethnographic ones. In this regard, his works of the prison period are something different from the usual Parajanovian fantasies. Unlike the authors who studied the ethnography of the prison, even those who relied on their own experience (for example, L. Samoilov), Parajanov created a significant part of his works of prison content in the camp, like an ethnographer in the field, although there are also works that he created or supplemented after prison, again like an ethnographer, relying on his field notes. In other words, his works of the prison period are much closer to the genre of ethnography than his “ethnographic” films. The article also discusses the problem of the representation of Parajanov’s works of the prison period in the museums. Are they samples of prison art, a representation of a certain period in the author’s biography, or a kind of the prison ethnography?

Keywords: Soviet prison, prison art, ethnography of prison, prison daily life, collage, museum exposition

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